Distinct Values in Filter Dropdown(Distinct Sharpoint List Column Value)

Questions:

I'm trying to do something that should be simple but does not appear to be in practise.

I have a simple sharepoint list. I added 4 entries, one of the columns is "Country"
Next, I created an aspx page in Sharepoint Designer to display the values in a table.

I added a DataSource based on the list and then a drop down control, populating it with the "Country" values... however I can not get rid of the non-unique values.
This was to be my Country Filter

I have 4 items, 3 have Ireland, 1 have the UK, I get 3 Irelands and a UK in my list. While you can sort the values, there does not appear to be anyway to tell sharepoint to just display distinct values.

If this was asp.net and a sql server you would simply do a "select distinct... " query.

 

string   siteUrl = "http://" + Request.Url.Host + ":" + Request.Url.Port + "/" + _lang + "/";   SPSite spSiteCollection = new SPSite(siteUrl);   SPWeb currentWeb = spSiteCollection.RootWeb;   SPListcurrentList=this.CurrentWeb.Lists[this.ListName];

SPFieldCollectionlistFields=currentList.Fields;

SortedListslSortedList=newSortedList();

foreach(SPFieldfieldinlistFields)

{

if(field.Sortable&&!field.Hidden)

{

if(!slSortedList.ContainsKey(field.Title))

{

slSortedList.Add(field.Title,field.InternalName);

}

}

}

ddlSRSortField1.DataSource=slSortedList;

ddlSRSortField1.DataTextField="Key";

ddlSRSortField1.DataValueField="Value";

ddlSRSortField1.DataBind();       I tried using CAML Query...here using Datatable distinct list items were selected. public DataView DistinctProjectItem(string listName,string fieldName)     {         siteUrl = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["siteUrl"].ToString();         SPSite spSite = new SPSite(siteUrl);         SPWeb spWeb = spSite.OpenWeb();         using (spWeb = spSite.OpenWeb())         {             SPList MyList = spWeb.Lists["Employee Log"];             SPListItemCollection spListItem;             SPQuery spDistinctItem = new SPQuery();             spDistinctItem.Query = "<OrderBy><FieldRef Name='Projects'/></Order By><FieldRef Name='"+fieldName+"'/>";             spListItem = MyList.GetItems(spDistinctItem);             DataTable dtDistinctProject = spListItem.GetDataTable();             try             {                 DataTable dtListItem = dtDistinctProject.DefaultView.ToTable(true, fieldName);//true means selecting distince items                 DataView dvListItem = new DataView(dtListItem);                 return(dvListItem);             }             catch             {                 DataView dvListItemEmpty = null;                 return (dvListItemEmpty);             }         }     } reference: http://www.sharepointdev.net/sharepoint--design-customization/distinct-values-in-filter-dropdown-9960.shtml   http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/sharepointcustomization/thread/9b2464fc-1255-431e-8976-f4c9e44ec256/     http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/sharepointdevelopment/thread/a2c6bed0-eee1-4f9b-b468-fc57c2e45c16