Re: [GENERAL] Any ideas why this doesn't work or how to rewrite it?

On Thu, 29 Apr 1999, Herouth Maoz wrote:

> At 18:50 +0300 on 28/04/1999, Aaron Holtz wrote:
>
>
> > db=> select count(distinct customer_username) from customerdata;
> > ERROR:  parser: parse error at or near "distinct"
> >
> > How do you get a count of distinct data output via postgres?  I can always
> > just count the number of tuples returned but this seemed to be a valid
> > query.
>
> Valid it is, but not yet supported in PostgreSQL.
>
> An (ugly) workaround would be something along the lines of:
>
> SELECT count(customer_username)
> FROM customerdata c1
> WHERE int( oid ) = (
>   SELECT min( int( c2.oid ) )
>   FROM customerdata c2
>   WHERE c1.customer_username = c2.customer_username
> );

I think, Aaron, you could get a count of distinct customer names like this:

SELECT DISTINCT customer_username, COUNT(*) FROM customerdata
GROUP BY customer_username;

This will give you 2 columns, one with the distinct customer_usernames
and the second with the count of each.  The GROUP BY caluse is important
here.  This looks like what you wanted in your original query.

Brett W. McCoy
                                         http://www.lan2wan.com/~bmccoy
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