DISTINCT/ORDER BY

I have a query that needs return a list of CATEGORY and sorted by another field. There may be duplicate CATEGORY values, so I need to do something similar to DISTINCT.

The following sorts correctly, but shows duplicates.

select category
from TheTable
ORDER BY thesequence

So I added DISTINCT to it:

select distinct category
from TheTable
ORDER BY thesequence

and get the error ORA-01791: not a SELECTed expression

If I add thesequence to the SELECT, then I loose the DISTINCT. How can I do this?

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Before you buy. Received on Fri Oct 22 1999 - 16:08:15 CDT