Lars, One idea that occurs to me, and it's a tradeoff from Torsten's idea (which is to read the whole database, and parse out the unique rows), is to first execute your "SELECT DISTINCT distinct_col FROM table", and then walk through that, and for each one issue a "SELECT * FROM table WHERE distinct_col = {value} LIMIT 1" (For some reason I can't remember the 'LIMIT' syntax right now, so it might be LIMIT 0,1). More transactions with the database, but less data actually retrieved from the database. And if it's indexed by distinct_col, you should be fine. Added benefit: you can apply arbitrary ORDER BY mechanisms to the individual queries... so it will only show you the most recent, or the first, or a random entry... all up to you. -P ---- Original Message "Lars Hilsebein" <lars.hilsebein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:60D21430A600D61193B30050DA5C4E370F1F37@xxxxxxxxx Sorry, but it's not truly what I am searching for: The result is not unique. What I mean is: every entry in the distinct_col should only be delivered once. As it would happen when I do the query "SELECT DISTINCT distinct_col FROM table". But I need to fetch the whole row. Lars -- PHP Database Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php