Selecting COUNT(*) with DISTINCT

In SQL Server 2005 I have a table cm_production that lists all the code that’s been put into production. The table has a ticket_number, program_type, program_name and push_number along with some other columns.

GOAL: Count all the DISTINCT program names by program type and push number.

What I have so far is:

DECLARE @push_number INT;
SET @push_number = [HERE_ADD_NUMBER];

SELECT DISTINCT COUNT(*) AS Count, program_type AS [Type] 
FROM cm_production 
WHERE push_number=@push_number 
GROUP BY program_type

This gets me partway there, but it’s counting all the program names, not the distinct ones (which I don’t expect it to do in that query). I guess I just can’t wrap my head around how to tell it to count only the distinct program names without selecting them. Or something.

Answer

Count all the DISTINCT program names by program type and push number

SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT program_name) AS Count,
  program_type AS [Type] 
FROM cm_production 
WHERE push_number=@push_number 
GROUP BY program_type

DISTINCT COUNT(*) will return a row for each unique count. What you want is COUNT(DISTINCT <expression>): evaluates expression for each row in a group and returns the number of unique, non-null values.