MS SQL Server - GROUP BY statement

In this article, we would like to show you how to use GROUP BY statement in MS SQL Server.

Quick solution:

SELECT [column1], [column2], [columnN]
FROM [table_name]
WHERE condition
GROUP BY [column_name]
ORDER BY [column_name];

Practical example

To show how the GROUP BY statement works, we will use the following table:

Note:

At the end of this article you can find database preparation SQL queries.

Example

In this example, we will display the number of users in each country descending.

Query:

SELECT COUNT([name]) AS [number of users], [country]
FROM [users]
GROUP BY [country]
ORDER BY COUNT([name]) DESC;

Output:

Database preparation

create_tables.sql file:

CREATE TABLE [users] (
	[id] INT IDENTITY(1,1),
	[name] VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
	[country] VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
	PRIMARY KEY ([id])
);

insert_data.sql file:

INSERT INTO [users]
	([name], [country])
VALUES
	('Tom', 'Poland'),
	('Chris', 'Spain'),
	('Jack', 'Spain'),
    ('Kim', 'Vietnam'),
    ('Marco', 'Italy'),
	('Kate', 'Spain'),
	('Nam', 'Vietnam');