SQL SELECT DISTINCT

The SQL SELECT DISTINCT statement is used to select distinct(different, unique) value of centain database table column(s), and remove the duplicates from the result. The usage of this statement is same among MS SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL.

SQL SELECT DISTINCT Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT Column1, Column2, ...
FROM Table

SQL SELECT DISTINCT Example

Table: Employees

Select all the unique last names without duplicates:

SELECT DISTINCT LastName
FROM Employees

The result of above statement will look like:

The DISTINCT clause can be used with more than one column:

SELECT DISTINCT FirstName, LastName
FROM Employees

The above statement will return each unique FirstName and LastName combination. The result of this statement will look like: