[thelist] [sql] selecting multiple distinct columns
Paul Cowan
evolt at funkwit.com
Tue Oct 28 23:37:00 CST 2003
Paul Bennett wrote:
> Is it possible to query the db to get the distinct values of all these
> columns combined
> (eg all the unique values from not just int_area_1, but from int_area_2
> and 3 as well)
> ?
Yup. Assuming all you want out are the values, you can do something like
(you don't say what DB you're using, but this will certainly work in SQL
server):
SELECT
int_area_1
FROM
mytable
UNION
SELECT
int_area_2
FROM
mytable
UNION
SELECT
int_area_3
FROM
mytable
the UNION operator, by default, removes duplicates, so you'll just get out
the distinct values. If you did want each value to appear multiple
times as required, you'd use UNION ALL instead.
Cheers,
Paul
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