hey folks!

i have the followiong table example:

ID----Book-------Category
======================

1 ---- e ------------ b
2 ---- d ------------ b
3 ---- w ------------ a
4 ---- t ------------ a
5 ---- e ------------ c

what i'd like to do is get the Distinct categories, but sort them as they are in the DB, ie: according to the ID, to get this:

b
a
c


but when i write :

"SELECT DISTINCT category FROM tbl ORDER BY ID ASC", i get an error, saying that the "order" clashes with the "Distinct" .

anyone got ideas how to do this>?

thanks!
Snooper

That is correct, you'd need to replace the ID with category in the ORDER BY function or add ID into the SELECT segment of your SQL Statement.

Example:

SELECT DISTINCT(Category), ID
FROM TABLE
ORDER BY ID, Category

OR

SELECT DISTINCT(Category), ID
FROM TABLE
ORDER BY CATEGORY

BTW: You don't need to use ASC since that is the default sorting order. You'd only need to use DESC if you want to sort your results in descending order.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me

thanks for the reply.

neither gave me errors, which is a good sign, but i still havent got to the goal yet.

for option 1 i got:

---

b
b
a
a
c

which means that it sorting it by the ID, but not giving me the distinct.

for option 2 i got :

---

a
a
b
b
c

which means that the distinct hasnt work, and the order by ID either.

---

so we're getting there... opt 1 is closer so far!
any tweaks that you can think of?

thanks!

sn

---

EDIT: PS: SELECT DISTINCT(category) FROM tblSefer_Parsha GROUP BY category gives:

a
b
c

which is obviously giving me the Distinct, but not the order i want ...