SQL Server 2008: TOP 10 and distinct together

Question

As the title says, I\'m using SQL Server 2008. Apologies if this question is very basic. I\'ve only been using SQL for a few days. Right now I have the following query:

Answer 1

You could use a Common Table Expression to get the top 10 distinct ID's and then join those to the rest of your data:

;WITH TopTenIDs AS
( 
   SELECT DISTINCT TOP 10 id
   FROM dm.labs 
   ORDER BY ......
)
SELECT 
    tti.id, pl.nm, pl.val, pl.txt_val
FROM
    TopTenIDs tti
INNER JOIN
    dm.labs pl ON pl.id = tti.id
INNER JOIN 
    mas_data.patients p ON pl.id = p.id
WHERE
    pl.nm like '%LDL%'
    AND val IS NOT NULL

That should work. Mind you: if you have a "TOP x" clause, you typically also need an ORDER BY clause - if you want the TOP 10, you need to tell the system in what order that "TOP" is.

PS: why do you even join the "patients" table, if you never select any fields from it??