MS SQL Server - SELECT DISTINCT statement

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

Quick solution:

SELECT DISTINCT [column1], [column2], [columnN]
FROM [table_name];

Practical example

To show how the SELECT DISTINCT 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 unique countries from the users table.

Query:

SELECT DISTINCT [country]
FROM [users];

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', 'Belgium'),
	('Jack', 'Belgium'),
	('Kate', 'Algeria'),
	('Denis', 'Germany'),
	('Matt', 'Germany');