The SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement

In a table, some of the columns may contain duplicate values. This is not a problem, however, sometimes you will want to list only the different (distinct) values in a table.

The DISTINCT keyword can be used to return only distinct (different) values.

SQL SELECT DISTINCT Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s)
FROM table_name

SELECT DISTINCT Example

The "student" table:

Student _No	Student_Name	Address	Year_Study	Sex	Date_of_birth	Course_No
ST100	K.Ranjan	Kandy	1	Male	17/01/1988	C1
ST101	N.Kumanan	Jaffna	2	Male	15/12/1989	C2
ST102	S.Ranjini	Vavuniya	1	Female	17/01/1989	C1
ST103	K.Dias	Colombo	3	Male	22/07/1987	C1
ST104	A.Kavitha	Matara	3	Female	20/03/1985	C2
ST105	L.Lavanya	Galle	2	Female	22/04/1989	C2
ST106	G.Moorthy	Jaffna	2	Male	12/01/1986	C1
ST107	F.Nathan	Matara	2	Male	29/01/1990	C3
ST108	A.H.M.Akmal	Puttalam	1	Male	12/12/1990	C3

Now we want to select only the distinct values from the column named "Address" from the table above.

We use the following SELECT statement:

 SELECT DISTINCT Address FROM student;

The result-set will look like this:

+----------+
| Address  |

| Kandy    |
+----------+
| Jaffna   |

| Matara   |
| Vavuniya |
| Colombo  |
| Galle    |
| Puttalam |
+----------+