johnblack - 9:52 pm on Feb 15, 2011 (gmt 0)

The distinct command applies across all columns - i.e. 'Short Circuit 41' and 'Short Circuit 42' are not dups.

It's effectively combining the columns to work out if there is a dup so if there were two rows

Short Circuit 44
Short Circuit 44

the query would only return one row for these two rows in the table.

Your second column is called ID, is this the primary key on the table? If so, then you will never get any dups as this field is unique across all rows on the table.

May be you are after the query

SELECT DISTINCT `FaultType` FROM `faultdatabase`

which would list all the different Fault Types in the table?

Hope that makes sense, haven't had a coffee yet :)