how to use DISTINCT when I have multiple column in sql server

Question

I have the following query:

select carBrand, carYear, carModel from cars;

what I want is to get only different car names.

I wrote this, but it is not what i want.

select DISTINCT carBrand, carYear, carModel from Cars;

how can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

DISTINCT works on the entire row, not a specific column. If you want to get the unique names, select only that column.

SELECT DISTINCT carBrand FROM Cars