[thelist] SQL SELECT Question

[Jon Haworth]

Hi Burhan,

> how do you write a select statement so it
> returns only a list of all values in one column.

[...]

> I then thought that if I gave a conditional that's
> always true, it might work, ie. "SELECT someColumn
> FROM someTable WHERE 1=1", but was told that it didn't work.

It should do... you don't even need the conditional (just "SELECT someColumn
FROM someTable")

This should produce something like
+------------+
| someColumn |
+------------+
|  foo       |
|  foo       |
|  foo       |
|  foo       |
|  bar       |
|  bar       |
|  baz       |
+------------+

If you just wanted a list of individual values that occur in the column, but
not repeated over and over again, try

  SELECT DISTINCT someColumn FROM someTable

which should produce:
+------------+
| someColumn |
+------------+
|  foo       |
|  bar       |
|  baz       |
+------------+

And if you want a count of each value, try

  SELECT DISTINCT someColumn
       , COUNT(someColumn) AS Count
    FROM someTable
GROUP BY someColumn

which should give you:
+------------+-------+
| someColumn | Count |
+------------+-------+
|  foo       |    4  |
|  bar       |    2  |
|  baz       |    1  |
+------------+-------+

Cheers
Jon