group-by-clause.md

title	Group By Clause (Visual Basic)
ms.date	07/20/2015
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ms.technology	devlang-visual-basic
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helpviewer_keywords	queries [Visual Basic], Group By Group By statement [Visual Basic] Group By clause [Visual Basic]
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Group By Clause (Visual Basic)

Groups the elements of a query result. Can also be used to apply aggregate functions to each group. The grouping operation is based on one or more keys.

Syntax

Group [ listField1 [, listField2 [...] ] By keyExp1 [, keyExp2 [...] ]  
  Into aggregateList  

Parts

• listField1, listField2

  Optional. One or more fields of the query variable or variables that explicitly identify the fields to be included in the grouped result. If no fields are specified, all fields of the query variable or variables are included in the grouped result.

• keyExp1

  Required. An expression that identifies the key to use to determine the groups of elements. You can specify more than one key to specify a composite key.

• keyExp2

  Optional. One or more additional keys that are combined with keyExp1 to create a composite key.

• aggregateList

  Required. One or more expressions that identify how the groups are aggregated. To identify a member name for the grouped results, use the Group keyword, which can be in either of the following forms:

  Into Group  
  

  -or-

  Into <alias> = Group  
  

  You can also include aggregate functions to apply to the group.

Remarks

You can use the Group By clause to break the results of a query into groups. The grouping is based on a key or a composite key consisting of multiple keys. Elements that are associated with matching key values are included in the same group.

You use the aggregateList parameter of the Into clause and the Group keyword to identify the member name that is used to reference the group. You can also include aggregate functions in the Into clause to compute values for the grouped elements. For a list of standard aggregate functions, see Aggregate Clause.

Example

The following code example groups a list of customers based on their location (country) and provides a count of the customers in each group. The results are ordered by country name. The grouped results are ordered by city name.

[!code-vbVbSimpleQuerySamples#11]

See Also

Introduction to LINQ in Visual Basic
Queries
Select Clause
From Clause
Order By Clause
Aggregate Clause
Group Join Clause