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TOP and DISTINCT 🔝

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The TOP and DISTINCT keywords are handy modifiers to use after SELECT.

Note

TOP and DISTINCT should be used immediately after the SELECT keyword.

TOP will limit the number of rows returned

The TOP keyword is used to limit the number of rows returned from a SELECT statement. This is particularly useful when you're only interested in the first few rows of a result.

SELECT TOP 5
    DepartmentID,
    Name
FROM HumanResources.Department
;
DepartmentID Name
12 Document Control
1 Engineering
16 Executive
14 Facilities and Maintenance
10 Finance

If you use TOP with an ORDER BY clause, the rows will be ordered first and then the TOP will be applied:

SELECT TOP 5
    DepartmentID,
    Name
FROM HumanResources.Department
ORDER BY DepartmentID
;
DepartmentID Name
1 Engineering
2 Tool Design
3 Sales
4 Marketing
5 Purchasing

Other SQL flavours might use LIMIT instead of TOP

This is just an FYI! Although Microsoft SQL Server (and a few other SQL flavours) use TOP, other SQL flavours use the keyword LIMIT instead. Flavours that use LIMIT also put it at the end of the statement instead of after the SELECT clause, too, like this:

SELECT
    DepartmentID,
    Name
FROM HumanResources.Department
ORDER BY DepartmentID
LIMIT 5
;

Make sure you know which SQL flavour you're using so that you can use the right keyword!

DISTINCT will remove duplicate rows from the result

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DISTINCT is equivalent to using the "Remove Duplicates" feature in Excel!

The DISTINCT keyword can take a bit of getting used to, but it is used to remove duplicate rows from the result. Note that "duplicate" means every value in the row is the same as the corresponding value in another row.

For example, this output has rows that are the same:

SELECT
    GroupName,
    ModifiedDate
FROM HumanResources.Department
WHERE GroupName = 'Research and Development'
;
GroupName ModifiedDate
Research and Development 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000
Research and Development 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000
Research and Development 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000

Adding DISTINCT will remove the duplicates, keeping only the unique rows:

SELECT DISTINCT
    GroupName,
    ModifiedDate
FROM HumanResources.Department
WHERE GroupName = 'Research and Development'
;
GroupName ModifiedDate
Research and Development 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000

This keyword is particularly useful when you're interested in the unique values of a column, such as:

SELECT DISTINCT GroupName
FROM HumanResources.Department
;
GroupName
Executive General and Administration
Inventory Management
Manufacturing
Quality Assurance
Research and Development
Sales and Marketing

TOP and DISTINCT can be used together

Although it might not be super helpful, you can use TOP and DISTINCT together to get the first few unique rows from a result:

SELECT DISTINCT TOP 3
    GroupName,
    ModifiedDate
FROM HumanResources.Department
;
GroupName ModifiedDate
Executive General and Administration 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000
Inventory Management 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000
Manufacturing 2008-04-30 00:00:00.000

The keyword order is important here -- DISTINCT has to be written before TOP.

Further reading

Check out the official Microsoft documentation for more information on TOP and DISTINCT at:

The video version of this content is also available at:

Additional modifiers

The TOP keyword also has additional modifiers which are outside the scope of this course. These include PERCENT, WITH TIES, and using an expression rather than a fixed number:

Error

This is a contrived example (using a larger table) to show the additional modifiers.

SELECT TOP (10 * RAND()) PERCENT WITH TIES
    FirstName,
    LastName
FROM Person.Person
ORDER BY FirstName
;