SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The SELECT DISTINCT statement in SQL is used to return unique values from a specified column or combination of columns in a table. It eliminates duplicate records and displays only unique values.

Here is the basic syntax for the SELECT DISTINCT statement:

SELECT DISTINCT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name;

Example Table

Let's assume we have the following table named Employees:

Query to Get Unique Departments

To get a list of unique departments from the Employees table, you can use the following query:

SELECT DISTINCT Department
FROM Employees;

Output:

Query to Get Unique Names

To get a list of unique names from the Employees table, you can use the following query:

SELECT DISTINCT Name
FROM Employees;

Output:

Query to Get Unique Combinations of Name and Department

To get a list of unique combinations of names and departments, you can use the following query:

SELECT DISTINCT Name, Department
FROM Employees;

Output:

In this example, the SELECT DISTINCT statement ensures that only unique combinations of Name and Department are returned.