Practical SQL Handbook, The: Using SQL Variants, Fourth Edition

Removing Duplicates

It's true—SQL is not a formatting tool. There are some things it just can't do or can't do without expensive gyrations. Sometimes you simply have to give up and turn your results over to a good report writer. Removing duplicated elements from output to produce a nicely formatted display is one of those cases.

But hope springs eternal: More than one Internet respondent has wondered if there is any SQL method for cleaning up these kinds of results:

SQL

 select pub_id, type from titles order by pub_id pub_id type ====== ============ 0736 psychology 0736 psychology 0736 business 0736 psychology 0736 psychology 0736 psychology 0877 mod_cook 0877 trad_cook 0877 trad_cook 0877 mod_cook 0877 trad_cook 0877 (NULL) 1389 popular_comp ...