SQL Tutorial for Beginners: SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement

In this SQL tutorial for beginners, you will learn about SQL SELECT DISTINCT Statement with examples. The SQL SELECT DISTINCT statement retrieves distinct values from a database table.

Example

-- select the unique ages from the Customers table
SELECT DISTINCT age
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects only the unique values of age from the Customers table.

SQL DISTINCT Syntax

The syntax of the SQL DISTINCT statement is:

SELECT DISTINCT column1, column2 ...
FROM table;

Here,

column1, column2, ... are the table columns
table is the table name from where we retrieve the distinct columns

For example,

-- select the unique countries from the customers table
SELECT DISTINCT country
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects unique countries from the Customers table.

The DISTINCT clause with SELECT in SQL returns unique rows only

Example: Selecting unique countries

SQL DISTINCT With Multiple Columns

We can also use SELECT DISTINCT with multiple columns.

For example,

-- select rows if the first name and country of a customer is unique
SELECT DISTINCT country, first_name
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command selects rows if the combination of country and first_name is unique.

The DISTINCT clause with two columns returns unique data by combining two rows

Example: Selecting the unique combined fields

DISTINCT With COUNT

If we need to count the number of unique rows, we can use the COUNT() function with DISTINCT.

-- count the unique countries where customers are from 
SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT country)
FROM Customers;

Here, the SQL command returns the count of unique countries.

DISTINCT and COUNT used together to count unique values

Example: Counting unique countries

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