SQL Server 2008: TOP 10 and distinct together

Question

As the title says, I'm using SQL Server 2008. Apologies if this question is very basic. I've only been using SQL for a few days. Right now I have the following query:

SELECT TOP 10 p.id, pl.nm, pl.val, pl.txt_val  from dm.labs pl join mas_data.patients p       on pl.id = p.id   where pl.nm like '%LDL%'   and val is not null 

What I want to do is use select top n together with distinct values in the id column. Searching through some forums says to use

SELECT DISTINCT TOP 10 ... 

but when I replace the first line with

SELECT DISTINCT TOP 10 p.id, pl.nm, pl.val, pl.txt_val 

I get the same results as without the word distinct. What should I be doing to only get to filter out duplicate id entries?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Try

SELECT TOP 10 distinct MyId FROM sometable;