MySQL - Selecting Unique Entries

hi, i need to weed out all duplicate entries in a select statement. i've done research and have discovered 2 different possible solutions for this. i'd like to know which one is better to use? after trying them out on MySQL, Select Distinct appears to be highly unreliable. i get somewhat better results when i use Select Distinct trim(seminar_name), but this Group By solution seems to work better: SELECT seminar_name FROM student_table GROUP BY seminar_name SELECT DISTINCT seminar_name FROM student_table thanks for the advice, tom