SQL SELECT DISTINCT

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Article Summary

Sometimes, your query results have duplicates. To get only unique (different) values, we use DISTINCT. 🔹 How to Use DISTINCT 🧠 What DISTINCT Does ⚠️ Notes 🧩 Quick Recap Example What it does SELECT DISTINCT department FROM employees; List of unique departments SELECT DISTINCT department, job_title FROM employees; Unique department & job_title combos ✅ Simple […]

Sometimes, your query results have duplicates. To get only unique (different) values, we use DISTINCT.

🔹 How to Use DISTINCT

-- Get unique departments from employees
SELECT DISTINCT department FROM employees;

-- Multiple columns: unique combinations of those columns
SELECT DISTINCT department, job_title FROM employees;

🧠 What DISTINCT Does

Removes duplicate rows from the result
Works on all selected columns combined (if multiple columns selected)

⚠️ Notes

Using DISTINCT can slow down queries on large data sets — use only when needed
To remove duplicates on a single column, just select that column with DISTINCT

🧩 Quick Recap

Example	What it does
`SELECT DISTINCT department FROM employees;`	List of unique departments
`SELECT DISTINCT department, job_title FROM employees;`	Unique department & job_title combos

✅ Simple and useful to clean up your data output!