115

T-SQL Distinct keyword

In T-SQL, the DISTINCT keyword is used with the SELECT statement to eliminate duplicate records and give only the unique documents.

Below is the situation where we have many duplicate records in the table. When we fetch records, it makes more sense to bring only unique documents in place of duplicates.

Syntax:

The syntax of the DISTINCT keyword is given below:

Example:

EMPLOYEES TABLE is given below:

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
01	William	32	Karachi	7000.00
02	Avery	24	London	3000.00
03	Monty	34	New York	1200.00
04	Harper	20	New York	1500.00
05	Ella	22	Islamabad	4400.00
06	Monty	23	Turkey	4400.00
07	Mason	26	Saudi Arabia	5050.00

Let us see how the SELECT query returns duplicate salary records.

This command produces the below output where the salary 4400 comes twice, which is a duplicate record from the real table.

Let us use the DISTINCT keyword with the above SELECT query and then see the result.

The command produces the below output, where we have not any duplicate entry.

---