Question

I have a query which returns a number of ints and varchars.

I want the result Distinct but by only one of the ints.

SELECT DISTINCT
        t.TaskID ,
        td.[TestSteps]
FROM    SOX_Task t
snip

Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

I want the result Distinct but by only one of the ints.

This:

SELECT DISTINCT t.taskid
  FROM SOX_TASK t

…will return a list of unique taskid values – there will not be any duplicates.

If you want to return a specific value, you need to specify it in the WHERE clause:

SELECT t.*
  FROM SOX_TASK t
 WHERE t.taskid = ?

That will return all the rows with the specific taskid value. If you want a distict list of the values associated with the taskid value:

SELECT DISTINCT t.*
  FROM SOX_TASK t
 WHERE t.taskid = ?

GROUP BY is another means of getting distinct/unique values, and it’s my preference to use, but in order to use GROUP BY we need to know the columns in the table and what grouping you want.