Multiple Uniques

[Anon]

I have a bit of a problem and I cannot for the life of me come up with something.

Here is the problem...

I have a table with 3 columns:

ID, catID, artID

I have this table because an artID, could have many catID's, and a catID can have many artID's

Now when im getting this info to list on a page, i want to grab all of the artID's , now there could be many artID's that are the same number, that just have different catID's. How do i filter out so i only get each unique artID.

Here is an example if i totally wrote this horrible:

ID - catID - artID

1 - 1 - 1
2 - 2 - 1
3 - 1 - 2
4 - 2 - 2

when i select all the art id's im going to get:

1
1
2
2

instead of just

1
2

Any ideas?

[Anon]

First, is there any reason for that first ID? Do you want to allow multiple records with the same catID AND same artID?

Second, don't you have and Art table that defines your artID? Could you just use that?

Third, if second isn't right for you, use DISTINCT, as in SELECT DISTINCT artID.

HTH,
Beth

[Anon]

Yeah i dont really need the ID field.

artID links to a table and so does catID.

I will look into distinct. The whole reason for this table is because the art table and cat table are many to many. Thanks for your help.