some querys that has DISTINCT and ORDER BY should be invalid

[zz-jason]

1. What did you do?

drop table if exists t;
create table t(a bigint, b bigint, c bigint);
insert into t values(1, 2, 1), (1, 2, 2), (1, 3, 1), (1, 3, 2);
select distinct a, b from t order by c;

To order the result, duplicates must be eliminated first. But to do so, which row should we keep ? This choice influences the retained value of c, which in turn influences ordering and makes it arbitrary as well.

In MySQL, a query that has DISTINCT and ORDER BY is rejected as invalid if any ORDER BY expression does not satisfy at least one of these conditions:

• The expression is equal to one in the select list
• All columns referenced by the expression and belonging to the query's selected tables are elements of the select list

2. What did you expect to see?

MySQL > select distinct a, b from t order by c;
ERROR 3065 (HY000): Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'test.t.c' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT

3. What did you see instead?

TiDB > select distinct a, b from t order by c;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 |    2 |
|    1 |    3 |
+------+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

TiDB > desc select distinct a, b from t order by c;
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------+
| id            | parents      | children      | task | operator info                                                                                                | count |
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------+
| TableScan_7   | HashAgg_6    |               | cop  | table:t, range:(-inf,+inf), keep order:false                                                                 |     4 |
| HashAgg_6     |              | TableScan_7   | cop  | type:complete, group by:test.t.a, test.t.b, funcs:firstrow(test.t.a), firstrow(test.t.b), firstrow(test.t.c) |     1 |
| TableReader_9 | HashAgg_8    |               | root | data:HashAgg_6                                                                                               |     1 |
| HashAgg_8     | Sort_4       | TableReader_9 | root | type:final, group by:, , funcs:firstrow(col_0), firstrow(col_1), firstrow(col_2)                             |     1 |
| Sort_4        | Projection_5 | HashAgg_8     | root | test.t.c:asc                                                                                                 |     1 |
| Projection_5  |              | Sort_4        | root | test.t.a, test.t.b                                                                                           |     1 |
+---------------+--------------+---------------+------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+-------+
6 rows in set (0.00 sec)

4. What version of TiDB are you using (tidb-server -V)?

$./bin/tidb-server -V
Git Commit Hash: a0017eda04a1d48e9ec088457afe279a8cd064f4
UTC Build Time:  2017-08-19 01:35:40

[winoros]

mysql> select distinct a, b from t order by c;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 |    2 |
|    1 |    3 |
+------+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Mysql version: Server version: 5.7.19 Homebrew

[zimulala]

This specific behavior depends on sql_mode.

mysql> select @@sql_mode;
+--------------------+
| @@sql_mode         |
+--------------------+
| ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY |
+--------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> select distinct a, b from t order by c;
ERROR 3065 (HY000): Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'test.t.c' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT

mysql> set @@sql_mode="";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> select @@sql_mode;
+------------+
| @@sql_mode |
+------------+
|            |
+------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select distinct a, b from t order by c;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 |    2 |
|    1 |    3 |
+------+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

[morgo]

Confirming that this issue is still present:

mysql> drop table if exists t;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> create table t(a bigint, b bigint, c bigint);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)

mysql> insert into t values(1, 2, 1), (1, 2, 2), (1, 3, 1), (1, 3, 2);
Query OK, 4 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> select distinct a, b from t order by c;
+------+------+
| a    | b    |
+------+------+
|    1 |    2 |
|    1 |    3 |
+------+------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

[morgo]

This is no longer the case, so I think we can close this issue:

tidb>  select distinct a, b from t order by c;
ERROR 3065 (HY000): Expression #1 of ORDER BY clause is not in SELECT list, references column 'test.t.c' which is not in SELECT list; this is incompatible with DISTINCT
tidb> select tidb_version()\G
*************************** 1. row ***************************
tidb_version(): Release Version: v5.2.1
Edition: Community
Git Commit Hash: cd8fb24c5f7ebd9d479ed228bb41848bd5e97445
Git Branch: heads/refs/tags/v5.2.1
UTC Build Time: 2021-09-08 02:32:56
GoVersion: go1.16.4
Race Enabled: false
TiKV Min Version: v3.0.0-60965b006877ca7234adaced7890d7b029ed1306
Check Table Before Drop: false
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

However, the detection is not perfect. See: #29418 -- we can leave this new bug open as it is a different case.