Question

I’m trying to do a statement to only select distinct records based on the legacy_call_id__c field, but I’m not sure how to do that. I am getting an error,

Msg 8163, Level 16, State 3, Line 1 The text, ntext, or image data
type cannot be selected as DISTINCT.”

SELECT DISTINCT Name, CreatedDate, clientId__c, completedDate__c
  , Legacy_Call_ID__c, Description_Short__c
  FROM Customers.dbo.Incident__c
  WHERE Description_Short__c LIKE 'New Hire%'
    OR Description_Short__c LIKE 'Term%'

I’m using SQL Server 2008R2 if that makes a difference. Thanks!

Answer 1

You probably have a column of type text or ntext in your select query, that is not allowed with distinct. Change the column type to varchar(max) instead. Or cast it directly in the query

SELECT DISTINCT 
  Name, 
  CreatedDate, 
  clientId__c, 
  completedDate__c, 
  Legacy_Call_ID__c, 
  CAST(Description_Short__c AS VarChar(max)) --Assuming that is the Text/nText column
FROM Customers.dbo.Incident__c
WHERE Description_Short__c LIKE 'New Hire%'
  OR Description_Short__c LIKE 'Term%'

EDIT

Not completly sure but something like this might work:

 SELECT 
        Name, 
        CreatedDate, 
        clientId__c, 
        completedDate__c, 
        Legacy_Call_ID__c, 
        Description_Short__c
    FROM 
        Customers.dbo.Incident__c As tblOuter
    WHERE
        EXISTS(
            SELECT
                NULL
            FROM 
                Customers.dbo.Incident__c as tblInner
            WHERE 
                (tblInner.Description_Short__c LIKE 'New Hire%' OR
                tblInner.Description_Short__c LIKE 'Term%') AND
                tblInner.Legacy_Call_ID__c = tblOuter.Legacy_Call_ID__c
            GROUP BY
                tblInner.Legacy_Call_ID__c
            HAVING
                MAX(tblInner.CreatedDate) = tblOuter.CreatedDate
            )