SQL Server 2008: delete duplicate rows

Question

I have duplicate rows in my table, how can I delete them based on a single column\'s value?

Eg

uniqueid, col2, col3 ...
1, john, simpson
2, sally, ro         


        

Answer 1

You can DELETE from a cte:

WITH cte AS (SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY uniqueid ORDER BY col2)'RowRank'
             FROM Table)
DELETE FROM cte 
WHERE RowRank > 1

The ROW_NUMBER() function assigns a number to each row. PARTITION BY is used to start the numbering over for each item in that group, in this case each value of uniqueid will start numbering at 1 and go up from there. ORDER BY determines which order the numbers go in. Since each uniqueid gets numbered starting at 1, any record with a ROW_NUMBER() greater than 1 has a duplicate uniqueid

To get an understanding of how the ROW_NUMBER() function works, just try it out:

SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY uniqueid ORDER BY col2)'RowRank'
FROM Table
ORDER BY uniqueid

You can adjust the logic of the ROW_NUMBER() function to adjust which record you'll keep or remove.

For instance, perhaps you'd like to do this in multiple steps, first deleting records with the same last name but different first names, you could add last name to the PARTITION BY:

WITH cte AS (SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY uniqueid, col3 ORDER BY col2)'RowRank'
             FROM Table)
DELETE FROM cte 
WHERE RowRank > 1