The SELECT DISTINCT Statement

The DISTINCT keyword is used to return only distinct (different) values.

The SELECT statement returns information from table columns. But what if we only want to select distinct elements?

With SQL, all we need to do is to add a DISTINCT keyword to the SELECT statement:
Syntax

SELECT DISTINCT column_name(s)
FROM table_name

Using the DISTINCT keyword

To select ALL values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT statement like this:

SELECT Company FROM Orders

"Orders" table
Company OrderNumber
Sega 3412
W3Schools 2312
Trio 4678
W3Schools 6798

Result
Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio
W3Schools

Note that "W3Schools" is listed twice in the result-set.

To select only DIFFERENT values from the column named "Company" we use a SELECT DISTINCT statement like this:

SELECT DISTINCT Company FROM Orders

Result:
Company
Sega
W3Schools
Trio

Now "W3Schools" is listed only once in the result-set.