Distinct rows

[sidsel]

I have field where I use DISTINCT to select only the unique names, but how do I select entire rows where name is unique?

The below query does not work for me...

SELECT DISTINCT name, description, bla1, bla2 FROM table

[bastien]

try palcing parantheses around the distinct column name

select distinct(name), description, bla1, bla2 FROM table

[dnszero]

That won't work, SELECT DISTINCT is based on the entire row returned.

You can use a subquery (if your DBMS supports it), very easily for this

SELECT name, description, bla1, bla2
FROM table WHERE name IN (SELECT DISTINCT name FROM table)

I think you could also do this with a left join instead, but I don't really know much about them. Also,
you could create a temporary table containing the SELECT DISTINCT name FROM table results, and then
do your real SELECT and match off of that table.

Finally, if you don't really need uniqueness in the name field, just no duplicates, you could use GROUP
BY name at the end of your query.

HTH

[sidsel]

Group by name worked for me. Thanks