What is the SELECT DISTINCT Statement?

The SELECT DISTINCT statement is used to return only distinct (different) values from a column in a database table. This helps avoid duplicates in the result set.

Example

Select all the different states from the “Customers” table:

SELECT DISTINCT State
FROM Customers;

This statement returns unique states by filtering out duplicate entries in the “State” column.

Output:

State
Maharashtra
West Bengal
Telangana
Punjab
Delhi

Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name;

Use this syntax to fetch distinct values from one or more columns in a specified table.

Demo Database

Below is a selection from the “Customers” table used in the examples:

CustomerID	CustomerName	ContactName	State
1	Shree Tiffins	Ravi Kumar	Maharashtra
2	Kolkata Sweets	Aarti Kapoor	West Bengal
3	Hyderabad Biryani House	Ali Khan	Telangana
4	Punjab Dhaba	Sandeep Singh	Punjab
5	Delhi Delights	Neha Sharma	Delhi

SELECT Example Without DISTINCT

If you omit the DISTINCT keyword, all values, including duplicates, will be returned:

SELECT State
FROM Customers;

Output:

State
Maharashtra
West Bengal
Telangana
Punjab
Delhi
Maharashtra
West Bengal

Count Distinct

By using the DISTINCT keyword with the COUNT function, you can return the number of unique states:

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT State)
FROM Customers;

Output:

This statement returns the number of unique states in the Customers table, which is 5.