Okuzeka
Databases & SQL vocabulary · SQL Statements and Queries

SELECT DISTINCT

Meaning in databases & SQL, with examples

phraseCommon term

In databases & SQL, SELECT DISTINCT means: A form of the SELECT statement that removes duplicate rows from the result, so each combination of returned values appears only once.

In Turkish: tekrarsız seçim, SELECT DISTINCT

How it is used

Handy for questions like 'which countries do our customers come from?'. Experienced developers are suspicious when DISTINCT is added to hide duplicates caused by a wrong join; the fix is usually the join, not DISTINCT. COUNT(DISTINCT column) counts unique values.

Example sentences

  1. SELECT DISTINCT country FROM customers gives us the list of markets we sell in.

  2. Don't fix the duplicates with SELECT DISTINCT; the join condition is wrong.

Common collocations

  • SELECT DISTINCT
  • COUNT(DISTINCT ...)
  • remove duplicates
  • distinct values
  • SELECT statementThe SQL statement that reads data from one or more tables and returns the matching rows without changing anything in the database.
  • UNIONA SQL operator that stacks the results of two or more SELECT statements into one result, one under the other, removing duplicate rows.
  • GROUP BYThe SQL clause that puts rows with the same values into groups so that a total, count or average can be calculated for each group.
  • joinA SQL operation that combines rows from two or more tables using a related column, such as a customer ID. As a verb, to join tables means to combine them this way.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: SQL Statements and Queries

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: