SQL grouping by all the columns

Question

Is there any way to group by all the columns of a table without specifying the column names? Like:

select * from table group by *

Answer 1

If you are using SqlServer the distinct keyword should work for you. (Not sure about other databases)

declare @t table (a int , b int)

insert into @t (a,b) select 1, 1
insert into @t (a,b) select 1, 2
insert into @t (a,b) select 1, 1

select distinct * from @t

results in

a b
1 1
1 2

Answer 2

Short answer: no. GROUP BY clauses intrinsically require order to the way they arrange your results. A different order of field groupings would lead to different results.

Specifying a wildcard would leave the statement open to interpretation and unpredictable behaviour.

Answer 3

No because this fundamentally means that you will not be grouping anything. If you group by all columns (and have a properly defined table w/ a unique index) then SELECT * FROM table is essentially the same thing as SELECT * FROM table GROUP BY *.