How can I select distinct rows when a text field is part of the returned fields in MS SQL Server 2000?

Question

I have a database-driven FAQ that is organised into sections and I am trying to get the section data for only those sections who have a question/answer associated with them.

Here is the schema:

|---------------------|      |----------------------|
|       Section       |      |       Quest-Ans      |
|---------------------|      |----------------------|
| PK | id(int)        |<--|  | PK     | id(int)     |
|    | title(varchar) |   |--| FK     | Sec_id(int) |
|    | desc(text)     |      |        | body(text)  |
|---------------------|      |----------------------|

When I try this query:

SELECT DISTINCT s.id, s.title, s.desc
FROM Section as s INNER JOIN Quest-Ans as q ON s.id = q.Sec_id

I get an error saying that DISCRETE cannot be applied to a text field. How can I get the data I want?

If it matters, this is an SQL2000 database.

EDIT:

---

Ok, so it seems like there are two ways to go about this. Either with EXISTS and a subquery in the where clause, or with the subquery in the inner join. Which is faster?

Answer 1

This should do it:

SELECT s.id, s.title, s.desc
FROM Section as s 
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT * FROM Quest-Ans as q where q.Sec_id = s.id)

Answer 2

Try it:

SELECT s.Title, s.Desc
FROM Section as s
INNER JOIN (
  SELECT DISTINCT s.id
  FROM Section as s 
  INNER JOIN Quest-Ans as q ON s.id = q.Sec_id
) q ON s.Id = q.Id

Answer 3

select s.id, s.title, s.desc
from Section s 
inner join (select distinct sec_id from Quest-Ans) dqa on s.id = dqa.sec_id