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Distinct

  • May 7, 2013 at 10:10 am

    #1613060

    sknox (5/7/2013)

    ...

    I'm glad to see that that has not happened.

    +1

    (now people are getting smart and they are considering CI_AS as the default collation when not mentioned by author :-P)

    ww; Raghu
    --
    The first and the hardest SQL statement I have wrote- "select * from customers" - and I was happy and felt smart.

  • May 7, 2013 at 10:55 am

    #1613079

    Simple and an Easy one

    Malleswarareddy
    I.T.Analyst
    MCITP(70-451)

  • May 8, 2013 at 12:54 am

    #1613214

    Nice one....

  • May 8, 2013 at 7:00 am

    #1613313

    Lokesh Vij (5/6/2013)

    Thanks for the easy one Vinay, after tricky Qotd yesterday 🙂

    +1 nice question....

    Manik
    You cannot get to the top by sitting on your bottom.

  • May 8, 2013 at 10:33 am

    #1613447

    manik123 (5/8/2013)

    Lokesh Vij (5/6/2013)

    Thanks for the easy one Vinay, after tricky Qotd yesterday 🙂

    +1 nice question....

    + another 1, with thanks

  • May 8, 2013 at 10:36 am

    #1613449

    Revenant (5/8/2013)

    manik123 (5/8/2013)

    Lokesh Vij (5/6/2013)

    Thanks for the easy one Vinay, after tricky Qotd yesterday 🙂

    +1 nice question....

    + another 1, with thanks

    Same!

    Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!

  • May 10, 2013 at 5:27 am

    #1614139

    Thanks for the question.

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
    My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
    MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

  • May 10, 2013 at 8:49 am

    #1614219

    I don't understand why so many people are so happy to be presented with a simple question, or so pleased with themselves for getting it right. personally I prefer something which makes me think.

    Having said that, it depends on your collation. If you're using case sensitive collation, then statements 2,3,4 and 5 would all fail.

  • May 13, 2013 at 11:03 am

    #1614708

    Hey Guys

    i tested the query out for this and it ran fine when i changed CAPS to the field names

  • May 15, 2013 at 2:01 am

    #1615309

    Good Question.

    A few people getting carried away with Collation Sequences where it looks to me that the QOTD Author was concentrating on the last Select Statement.

    I like to think of the "Order By" as the Query's Presentation Layer. In this case the "Order By" couldn't present Data not in the Query's Results

    Regards

    David

  • May 16, 2013 at 8:35 am

    #1615828

    Easy today - what Hugo says is axiomatic.

    Hugo Kornelis (5/7/2013)

    Thanks! Good question.

    In addition to the explanation given: the restriction actually makes sense. Remember that, logically, the ORDER BY is performed *after* the SELECT. In the official ANSI standard, columns in the ORDER BY must always be in the SELECT clause. The fact that we usually can order by other columns is because, logically, SQL Server adds a hidden extra column in the SELECT, uses it for ordering, then doesn't disply it or return it to the client. (And I stress that this is "logically" - queries are not actually executed that way!). But with a SELECT DISTINCT, that is impossible. Adding the extra column before the DISTINCT would influence the results (the extra columns could make rows that are otherwise the same distinct to each other, and once removed the results would show duplicate rows in spite of the DISTINCT). And adding the extra column after the DISTINCT is impossible, since a single row after DISTINCT can correspond to multiple rows before DISTINCT.

    Or, yet another way to put it, suppose I have this data in a table called MyTable:

    Col1 | Col2

    -----+-----

    1 | a

    2 | b

    3 | a

    Now suppose I were allowed to execute this query:

    SELECT DISTINCT Col2

    FROM MyTable

    ORDER BY Col1;

    The resultset should contain an "a" and a "b". But in what order? The "b" comes from the row with Col1 = 2, but the "a' comes from two rows, with Col1 = 1 and Col1 = 3. Should the "a" go before or after the "b"? There is no possible answer for this - and that's why the query is illegal!

    Raghavendra Mudugal (5/7/2013)

    I guess, when we DISTINCT, it also sorts the data physically, so usage of additional ORDER BY is not needed

    WRONG!!!!!!

    This may or may not work correctly, but you have no guarantee.

    The optimizer had different ways to implement a DISTINCT. One of them is a "Distinct sort" - where rows are sorted and duplicate are removed. That would produce results in the specified output - though the optimizer could decide to reverse the order of the columns. Another way would be to convert the DISTINCT to an aggregate - remember that there is no difference at all between "SELECT DISTINCT Col1 FROM MyTable" and "SELECT Col1 FROM MyTable GROUP BY MyCol", and the optimizer knows that. If the aggregeate is implemented with a stream aggregate operator. you may still be okay (though, again, the order of the columns if more than one is used can be changed to match an existing index and avoid a sort step). But if a hash aggregate operator is used, you're completely hosed.

    And then, with a large enough table, you can get a parallel plan, where each individual stream might or might not have the rows in order, but the order is not retained when gathering streams. Or, with a complex query, the optimizer might decide to push down the distinct operator as far as possible to reduce the rows, and then reorder the results coming out of it for the rest, e.g. to facilitate a merge join, or as a byproduct of a hash join.

    When working with SQL Server, if you need guarantees about the order in which results will be returned - ALWAYS USE AN ORDER BY!!!!!

    Everything else means you rely on undocumented, and hence unguaranteed behaviour. A ticking timebomb!

  • May 21, 2013 at 1:10 am

    #1616852

    Nice Ez Pz question. 🙂

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