data duplication

Dear All

I have SELECT clause which uses loads of OUTER JOINS to produce a table with loads of data needed for a front-end appliation

But, some of the data it produces is replicated because of the JOINS

e.g. an example of data is this

person_id LastName FirstName LanguageSpoken Speciality

1234 mySurNme my1stName FRENCH speciality1
1234 mySurNme my1stName GERMAN speciality2
1234 mySurNme my1stName FRENCH speciality1
1234 mySurNme my1stName GERMAN speciality2

I just want it to come out like this

person_id LastName FirstName LanguageSpoken Speciality

1234 mySurNme my1stName FRENCH speciality1
1234 mySurNme my1stName GERMAN speciality2

Can anyone help

GillYou can try "Select distinct ...". This will eliminate duplicate rows.|||Originally posted by ts555
You can try "Select distinct ...". This will eliminate duplicate rows.

That's the first thing I tried - that doen't work|||If you use distinct, it should not return duplicates. It would be helpful if you give us your query.|||Originally posted by jzhu
If you use distinct, it should not return duplicates. It would be helpful if you give us your query.

A couple of things come to mind.

1) Is the data clean? Dup records could cause a problem.

2) Take a close look at your joins, you could be receiving a cartesian product.

3) If the joins are correct the problem may be in the WHERE criteria. When joining many tables, especially where 1 to many relationships exists, its possible your WHERE clause is not specific enough to bring the number of returns down to a single row.sql