No distinct in a select into statement

SQL Apprentice Question
use MSSQL 2000 and encountered a strange problem wqhile I tried to
use a select into statement .


If I perform the command command below I get only one dataset which has
the described properties.
If I use the same statement in a select into statement (see the second
select) I get several datasets with the described properties like I
didn't use distinct
Is there any posiibility to use destinct in a select into statement


select distinct IDENTITY (int) as ID, Title1 as Title1, Title2 as
Title2, Title3 as Title3,
AggregationTitle1 as AggregationTitle1, AggregationTitle2 as
AggregationTitle2,
AggregationTitle3 as AggregationTitle3, AggregationTitle4 as
AggregationTitle4
from Variables where Title1 is not NULL or Title2 is not NULL or
Title3 is not NULL or
AggregationTitle1 is not NULL or AggregationTitle2 is not NULL or
AggregationTitle3 is not NULL or AggregationTitle4 is not NULL;


This is the same with select into :


select distinct IDENTITY (int) as ID, Title1 as Title1, Title2 as
Title2, Title3 as Title3,
AggregationTitle1 as AggregationTitle1, AggregationTitle2 as
AggregationTitle2,
AggregationTitle3 as AggregationTitle3, AggregationTitle4 as
AggregationTitle4
into VarTitles from Variables where Title1 is not NULL or Title2 is
not NULL or Title3 is not NULL or
AggregationTitle1 is not NULL or AggregationTitle2 is not NULL or
AggregationTitle3 is not NULL or
AggregationTitle4 is not NULL;


Hope anyone can help.


Celko Answers
Minor trick to make the code easier to read and maintain:

WHERE COALESCE (title1, title2, title3) IS NOT NULL
OR COALESCE (ggregation_title1, aggregation_title2,
aggregation_title3, aggregation_title4) IS NOT NULL


Unfortunately these columns look like repeated and a really bad 1NF
problem. I have the feeling that you might have wanted to use
COALESCE() in the SELECT list to get a non-null title and non-null
aggregation_title instead of this convoluted query.