Does Distinct Affect Performance?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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Does distinct affect performance? 4 Answers.

Yes, as using DISTINCT will (sometimes according to a comment) cause results to be ordered

. Sorting hundreds of records takes time.

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Does distinct improve performance?

Yes, the application needs to compare every record to the “distinct” records cache as it goes.

You can improve performance by using an index, particularly on the numeric and date fields

.

Is SELECT distinct bad for performance?

So, is SQL DISTINCT good or bad in removing duplicates in results? The results say that

it’s good

. It’s not better or worse than GROUP BY because the plans are the same. But it’s a good habit to check the execution plan.

Does distinct make query slow?

Is distinct faster than GROUP BY?

DISTINCT is used to filter unique records out of all records in the table. It removes the duplicate rows.

SELECT DISTINCT will always be the same, or faster than a GROUP BY

.

Is it better to use distinct or GROUP BY?

In MySQL,

DISTINCT seems a bit faster than GROUP BY if theField is not indexed

. DISTINCT only eliminate duplicate rows but GROUP BY seems to sort them in addition.

Is distinct faster than Row_number?

In my experience,

an aggregate (DISTINCT or GROUP BY) can be quicker then a ROW_NUMBER() approach

. Saying that, ROW_NUMBER is better with SQL Server 2008 than SQL Server 2005. However, you’ll have to try for your situation.

Why distinct is bad in SQL?

Your query will not perform optimally – DISTINCT causes an additional sort of data. It is possible that

one of the joins in the query needs to be an EXISTS subquery, or the join condition is incomplete, or the data model is faulty

. This needs to be investigated and the root cause fixed.

What can I use instead of distinct in SQL?


GROUP BY

is intended for aggregate function use; DISTINCT just removes duplicates (based on all column values matching on a per row basis) from visibility. If TABLE2 allows duplicate values associated to TABLE1 records, you have to use either option.

Is distinct an expensive operation?

In a table with million records, SQL Count Distinct might cause performance issues because

a distinct count operator is a costly operator in the actual execution plan

.

Why is Count distinct so slow?

It’s slow because

the database is iterating over all the logs and all the dashboards, then joining them, then sorting them, all before getting down to real work of grouping and aggregating

.

Which is faster GROUP BY or distinct in Oracle?

Looking at your query above, I am guessing that the reason why

group by

is faster (without seeing the query), is that the location of the group by reduces the number of records that end up being returned. Whereas distinct is blowing out the result set and doing row by row comparisons.

Does distinct do a full table scan?


The DBMS performs a full table scan when it thinks it appropriate

.

Does GROUP BY improve performance?


You can improve performance on some grouped joins by replacing the join with a subquery

. Most DBMSs do not merge WHERE and HAVING clauses. Write your queries with only a WHERE clause wherever possible. Use DISTINCT instead of GROUP BY if your query doesn’t involve set functions.

What is difference between grouping and distinct?

DISTINCT is used to filter unique records out of the records that satisfy the query criteria. The “GROUP BY” clause is used when you need to group the data and it should be used to apply aggregate operators to each group.

Can I use distinct and GROUP BY together?


SELECT DISTINCT can be used to give distinct values

. Use it to remove duplicate records and it can be used with aggregate function as well. For example: MAX, AVG etc.

How do you optimize large queries?

  1. Avoid repeatedly transforming data through SQL queries.
  2. Avoid JavaScript user-defined functions.
  3. Use approximate aggregation functions.
  4. Use aggregate analytic function to obtain the latest record.
  5. Order query operations to maximize performance.

Is ROW_NUMBER faster than GROUP BY?

Does the order of left joins matter for performance?

When should you use distinct in SQL?

SQL DISTINCT clause is used

to remove the duplicates columns from the result set

. The distinct keyword is used with select keyword in conjunction. It is helpful when we avoid duplicate values present in the specific columns/tables. The unique values are fetched when we use the distinct keyword.

Why do we use distinct?

The distinct keyword is used in conjunction with select keyword. It is helpful

when there is a need of avoiding duplicate values present in any specific columns/table

. When we use distinct keyword only the unique values are fetched. column1, column2 : Names of the fields of the table.

What is the purpose of distinct in SQL?

The SQL DISTINCT keyword is used in conjunction with the SELECT statement

to eliminate all the duplicate records and fetching only unique records

. There may be a situation when you have multiple duplicate records in a table.

What is difference between distinct and unique in SQL?

How can we avoid duplicate records in SQL without distinct?

  1. Remove Duplicates Using Row_Number. WITH CTE (Col1, Col2, Col3, DuplicateCount) AS ( SELECT Col1, Col2, Col3, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY Col1, Col2, Col3 ORDER BY Col1) AS DuplicateCount FROM MyTable ) SELECT * from CTE Where DuplicateCount = 1.
  2. Remove Duplicates using group By.

Is distinct the same as unique?

The main difference between unique and distinct is that

UNIQUE is a constraint that is used on the input of data and ensures data integrity. While DISTINCT keyword is used when we want to query our results or in other words, output the data

.

Is GROUP BY faster than distinct Postgres?

From experiments, I founded that the

GROUP BY is 10+ times faster than DISTINCT

. They are different. So what I learned is: GROUP-BY is anyway not worse than DISTINCT, and it is better sometimes.

Does distinct apply to all columns?

Which one is faster COUNT (*) or COUNT 1?

The simple answer is no –

there is no difference at all

. The COUNT(*) function counts the total rows in the table, including the NULL values.

What is the difference between COUNT and COUNT distinct?

What does COUNT distinct mean?

Can we use distinct on multiple columns in SQL?

In SQL

multiple fields may also be added with DISTINCT clause

. DISTINCT will eliminate those rows where all the selected fields are identical.

Can we use distinct and GROUP BY Together in Oracle?

Why is index scan faster than table scan?

An index scan can be faster because, presumably,

the index doesn’t cover the entire set of columns in the table

, while a table (or clustered index) scan has to read all of the data.

Can we apply distinct on two columns?

Answer.

Yes, the DISTINCT clause can be applied to any valid SELECT query

. It is important to note that DISTINCT will filter out all rows that are not unique in terms of all selected columns.

What is the difference between index full scan and index fast full scan?

Answer: While

an index fast full scan reads all of the data block in the index, in data block order, and index full scan does not read all of the blocks in an index

. Also, a fast-full scan reads the data blocks in block sequence, while an index full scan reads the index in tree order.

Is GROUP BY faster than distinct redshift?

With 500 000 records in HSQLDB with all distinct business keys, the performance of DISTINCT is now better – 3 seconds, vs

GROUP BY which took around 9 seconds

.

Leah Jackson
Author
Leah Jackson
Leah is a relationship coach with over 10 years of experience working with couples and individuals to improve their relationships. She holds a degree in psychology and has trained with leading relationship experts such as John Gottman and Esther Perel. Leah is passionate about helping people build strong, healthy relationships and providing practical advice to overcome common relationship challenges.