SELECT with DISTINCT and TOP

• Thomas Franz

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  June 17, 2017 at 11:28 pm

  #331176

  Comments posted to this topic are about the item SELECT with DISTINCT and TOP

  God is real, unless declared integer.

• George Vobr

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  June 19, 2017 at 4:42 am

  #1947225

  Thanks Thomas for this question. Yes, back to the basics, but I still looked into MSDN before answering ...

• Kingston Dhasian

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  June 19, 2017 at 4:57 am

  #1947227

  Nice question. Thanks.

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  Kingston Dhasian

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• sknox

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  June 19, 2017 at 5:55 am

  #1947232

  I always get the order of these two confused, because it's one of the places where SQL diverges from English.
  In English, DISTINCT TOP 5 would mean "get the distinct values of the top five results" -- which with this data set would return only one row (1), whereas TOP 5 DISTINCT clearly means "get the top 5 values of the distinct results."
  SQL uses the first syntax, but to mean the second instruction.

• webrunner

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  June 19, 2017 at 9:14 am

  #1947270

  Thanks for this instructive question.

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  A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
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• Revenant

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  June 19, 2017 at 10:25 am

  #1947282

  Nice - thanks, Thomas!

• Stewart "Arturius" Campbell

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  June 20, 2017 at 2:04 am

  #1947343

  Nice, simple question, thanks Thomas

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