DISTINCT Omits records that contain duplicate data in the selected fields. To be included in the results of the query, the values for each field listed in the SELECT statement must be unique. For example, several employees listed in an Employees table may have the same last name. If two records contain Smith in the LastName field, the following SQL statement returns only one record that contains Smith:
Code:
SELECT DISTINCT
LastName
FROM Employees;
If you omit DISTINCT, this query returns both Smith records.
If the SELECT clause contains more than one field, the combination of values from all fields must be unique for a given record to be included in the results.
The output of a query that uses DISTINCT is not updatable and does not reflect subsequent changes made by other users.
DISTINCTROW Omits data based on entire duplicate records, not just duplicate fields. For example, you could create a query that joins the Customers and Orders tables on the CustomerID field. The Customers table contains no duplicate CustomerID fields, but the Orders table does because each customer can have many orders. The following SQL statement shows how you can use DISTINCTROW to produce a list of companies that have at least one order but without any details about those orders:
Code:
SELECT DISTINCTROW CompanyName
FROM Customers INNER JOIN Orders
ON Customers.CustomerID = Orders.CustomerID
ORDER BY CompanyName;
If you omit DISTINCTROW, this query produces multiple rows for each company that has more than one order.
DISTINCTROW has an effect only when you select fields from some, but not all, of the tables used in the query. DISTINCTROW is ignored if your query includes only one table, or if you output fields from all tables.
Jaime E. Maccou
show one record if there are duplication
