Question

I have a table (call it table myTable).

It has the data like this:

number / name

1    jake
2    chris
3    sally
4    billy
1    tom
5    cathy

(I realize this is a poor setup, but I didn’t get the luxury of doing the setup)

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I need to query this table so that the results are returned with:

1    jake
2    chris
3    sally
4    billy
5    cathy

OR

2    chris
3    sally
4    billy
1    tom
5    cathy

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It does not matter which name gets returned for the duplicated number… only that ONE gets returned.

Here is my not-working attempt:

with
a as (
      SELECT number
      FROM myTable
),

b as (
      SELECT number, name
      FROM myTable
)


SELECT a."number", b."name"

FROM a
left join b on a."number" = b."number"

Answer 1

Use GROUP BY to ensure that each number is only returned once, and use an aggregate function to pick one of the values for name:

SELECT number, MAX(name) AS name
FROM yourtable
GROUP BY number