Understanding the DISTINCT ON Option in PostgreSQL

Most major RDBMSs support the DISTINCT clause, which allows us to get unique – or “distinct” – rows from our SQL queries. But PostgreSQL’s implementation of this clause has an extra option that most other RDBMSs don’t include.

PostgreSQL allows us to include the ON() option when using DISTINCT. This enables us to specify exactly which columns should be evaluated by the DISTINCT modifier, while simultaneously allowing us to return columns that aren’t evaluated.

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How to Use the DISTINCT Clause in SQL

Most of the major relational database management systems (RDBMSs) allow for a DISTINCT clause to be included in our SQL queries.

We use the DISTINCT keyword to return only unique rows. It eliminates duplicates from the results. If we have two or more rows with exactly the same data, we’ll only see one row in the results.

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Understanding the OFFSET Clause in Oracle

In Oracle Database, we can use the OFFSET clause to make a SELECT statement skip a certain number of rows in its result set.

The OFFSET clause is defined as part of the FETCH row limiting clause, which allows us to limit the number of rows returned by a query.

We can therefore use both OFFSET and FETCH to limit the output to just the specified number or percentage of rows, at a specified offset.

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Understanding the LIMIT Clause in SQL

Some of the major relational database management systems (RDBMSs) have a LIMIT clause that enables us to reduce the number of rows returned by a query.

The way it works is that we provide the number of rows we want to be returned by the query. We can also provide an offset to specify which row to start the count from.

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