I need to remove duplicate rows from a fairly large SQL Server table (i.e. 300,000+ rows).
The rows, of course, will not be perfect duplicates because of the existence of the RowID identity field.
MyTable
RowID int not null identity(1,1) primary key,
Col1 varchar(20) not null,
Col2 varchar(2048) not null,
Col3 tinyint not null
How can I do this?
Assuming no nulls, you GROUP BY the unique columns, and SELECT the MIN (or MAX) RowId as the row to keep. Then, just delete everything that didn't have a row id:
DELETE FROM MyTable
LEFT OUTER JOIN (
SELECT MIN(RowId) as RowId, Col1, Col2, Col3
FROM MyTable
GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3
) as KeepRows ON
MyTable.RowId = KeepRows.RowId
WHERE
KeepRows.RowId IS NULL
In case you have a GUID instead of an integer, you can replace
MIN(RowId)
with
CONVERT(uniqueidentifier, MIN(CONVERT(char(36), MyGuidColumn)))
DELETE FROM MyTable WHERE RowId NOT IN (SELECT MIN(RowId) FROM MyTable GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3); –
Elis LEFT JOIN is less efficient than NOT EXISTS sqlinthewild.co.za/index.php/2010/03/23/… The same site also compares NOT IN vs NOT EXISTS. sqlinthewild.co.za/index.php/2010/02/18/not-exists-vs-not-in Out of the 3 I think NOT EXISTS performs best. All three will generate a plan with a self join though that can be avoided. –
Septuagesima DELETE TOP(n) using cursors, and no solutions is close to yours. You solution is lean and swift, and does exactly what is expected from it. Thanks for sharing such a great knowledge! =) –
Markova RowId does not exists for Sql Server, it's an Oracle feature, and the question is tagged as sql-server. Am I right? –
Immense RowId is just the name of a column. It has no special meaning. There is no direct equivalent to Oracle's RowId in SQL Server. –
Septuagesima DELETE MyTable FROM MyTable correct syntax? I don't see putting the table name right after the DELETE as an option in the documentation here. Sorry if this is obvious to others; I'm a newbie to SQL just trying to learn. More importantly than why does it work: what is the difference between including the name of the table there or not? –
Scotch MyTable for update in FROM clause " –
Mori DELETE FROM myTable WHERE id IN ( SELECT id FROM myTable EXCEPT (SELECT MIN(id) id FROM myTable GROUP BY col1, col2, col3)); –
Manakin delete from MyTable where not exists (select 1 from (select min(RowId) as RowId from MyTable group by Col1, Col2, Col3) as KeepRows where MyTable.RowId = KeepRows.RowId); It is much too slow for 7M rows. –
Cosher DELETE FROM MyTable WHERE RowId NOT IN (SELECT MIN(RowId) FROM (SELECT * FROM MyTable) AS MyTableSubselect GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3); –
Farrow select col1,col2,col3 into MyNewTable from MyTable group by col1,col2col3? Is this causing some problem I don't see? –
Country Another possible way of doing this is
;
--Ensure that any immediately preceding statement is terminated with a semicolon above
WITH cte
AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Col1, Col2, Col3
ORDER BY ( SELECT 0)) RN
FROM #MyTable)
DELETE FROM cte
WHERE RN > 1;
I am using ORDER BY (SELECT 0) above as it is arbitrary which row to preserve in the event of a tie.
To preserve the latest one in RowID order for example you could use ORDER BY RowID DESC
Execution Plans
The execution plan for this is often simpler and more efficient than that in the accepted answer as it does not require the self join.
This is not always the case however. One place where the GROUP BY solution might be preferred is situations where a hash aggregate would be chosen in preference to a stream aggregate.
The ROW_NUMBER solution will always give pretty much the same plan whereas the GROUP BY strategy is more flexible.
Factors which might favour the hash aggregate approach would be
In extreme versions of this second case (if there are very few groups with many duplicates in each) one could also consider simply inserting the rows to keep into a new table then TRUNCATE-ing the original and copying them back to minimise logging compared to deleting a very high proportion of the rows.
uniqueidentifier. This one is much simpler and works perfectly on any table. Thanks Martin. –
Reciprocal OUTPUT clause. –
Septuagesima RowId) to compare on. –
Numbing ROW_NUMBER though. –
Septuagesima with cte as (select id, row_number() over (partition by Col1 order by id) as rn from MyTable) delete from MyTable where id in (select id from cte where rn > 1); This will leave the lowest primary key and delete the rest (order by id). –
Cosher There's a good article on removing duplicates on the Microsoft Support site. It's pretty conservative - they have you do everything in separate steps - but it should work well against large tables.
I've used self-joins to do this in the past, although it could probably be prettied up with a HAVING clause:
DELETE dupes
FROM MyTable dupes, MyTable fullTable
WHERE dupes.dupField = fullTable.dupField
AND dupes.secondDupField = fullTable.secondDupField
AND dupes.uniqueField > fullTable.uniqueField
The following query is useful to delete duplicate rows. The table in this example has ID as an identity column and the columns which have duplicate data are Column1, Column2 and Column3.
DELETE FROM TableName
WHERE ID NOT IN (SELECT MAX(ID)
FROM TableName
GROUP BY Column1,
Column2,
Column3
/*Even if ID is not null-able SQL Server treats MAX(ID) as potentially
nullable. Because of semantics of NOT IN (NULL) including the clause
below can simplify the plan*/
HAVING MAX(ID) IS NOT NULL)
The following script shows usage of GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER BY in one query, and returns the results with duplicate column and its count.
SELECT YourColumnName,
COUNT(*) TotalCount
FROM YourTableName
GROUP BY YourColumnName
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC
NOT IN often performs better than OUTER JOIN ... NULL. I would add a HAVING MAX(ID) IS NOT NULL to the query though even though semantically it ought not be necessary as that can improve the plan example of that here –
Septuagesima delete t1
from table t1, table t2
where t1.columnA = t2.columnA
and t1.rowid>t2.rowid
Postgres:
delete
from table t1
using table t2
where t1.columnA = t2.columnA
and t1.rowid > t2.rowid
DELETE LU
FROM (SELECT *,
Row_number()
OVER (
partition BY col1, col1, col3
ORDER BY rowid DESC) [Row]
FROM mytable) LU
WHERE [row] > 1
This will delete duplicate rows, except the first row
DELETE
FROM
Mytable
WHERE
RowID NOT IN (
SELECT
MIN(RowID)
FROM
Mytable
GROUP BY
Col1,
Col2,
Col3
)
Refer (http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/157977/Remove-Duplicate-Rows-from-a-Table-in-SQL-Server)
I would prefer CTE for deleting duplicate rows from sql server table
Strongly recommend this article.
By keeping original
WITH CTE AS
(
SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY col1,col2,col3 ORDER BY col1,col2,col3) AS RN
FROM MyTable
)
DELETE FROM CTE WHERE RN<>1
Without keeping original
WITH CTE AS
(SELECT *,R=RANK() OVER (ORDER BY col1,col2,col3)
FROM MyTable)
DELETE CTE
WHERE R IN (SELECT R FROM CTE GROUP BY R HAVING COUNT(*)>1)
To Fetch Duplicate Rows:
SELECT
name, email, COUNT(*)
FROM
users
GROUP BY
name, email
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
To Delete the Duplicate Rows:
DELETE users
WHERE rowid NOT IN
(SELECT MIN(rowid)
FROM users
GROUP BY name, email);
DELETE FROM, second, it won't work, because you can't SELECT from the same table you're DELETEing from. In MySQL this blasts off MySQL error 1093. –
Enos DELETE FROM ... LEFT OUTER JOIN that also does not work on some systems (e.g. SQL Server). If you run into the limitation stated above, you can always save the results of your selection into a temporary TABLE variable: DECLARE @idsToKeep TABLE(rowid INT); and then INSERT INTO @idsToKeep(rowid) SELECT MIN... GROUP BY ... followed by DELETE users WHERE rowid NOT IN (SELECT rowid FROM @idsToKeep); –
Mesoderm Quick and Dirty to delete exact duplicated rows (for small tables):
select distinct * into t2 from t1;
delete from t1;
insert into t1 select * from t2;
drop table t2;
set identity_insert t1 on. –
Beeves I prefer the subquery\having count(*) > 1 solution to the inner join because I found it easier to read and it was very easy to turn into a SELECT statement to verify what would be deleted before you run it.
--DELETE FROM table1
--WHERE id IN (
SELECT MIN(id) FROM table1
GROUP BY col1, col2, col3
-- could add a WHERE clause here to further filter
HAVING count(*) > 1
--)
MAX(id) to eliminate the latter duplicates, and added LIMIT 1000000 to the inner query so it wouldn't have to scan the whole table. This showed progress much quicker than the other answers, which would seem to hang for hours. After the table was pruned to a manageable size, then you can finish with the other queries. Tip: make sure col1/col2/col3 has indices for group by. –
Cosher SELECT DISTINCT *
INTO tempdb.dbo.tmpTable
FROM myTable
TRUNCATE TABLE myTable
INSERT INTO myTable SELECT * FROM tempdb.dbo.tmpTable
DROP TABLE tempdb.dbo.tmpTable
I thought I'd share my solution since it works under special circumstances. I my case the table with duplicate values did not have a foreign key (because the values were duplicated from another db).
begin transaction
-- create temp table with identical structure as source table
Select * Into #temp From tableName Where 1 = 2
-- insert distinct values into temp
insert into #temp
select distinct *
from tableName
-- delete from source
delete from tableName
-- insert into source from temp
insert into tableName
select *
from #temp
rollback transaction
-- if this works, change rollback to commit and execute again to keep you changes!!
PS: when working on things like this I always use a transaction, this not only ensures everything is executed as a whole, but also allows me to test without risking anything. But off course you should take a backup anyway just to be sure...
Using CTE. The idea is to join on one or more columns that form a duplicate record and then remove whichever you like:
;with cte as (
select
min(PrimaryKey) as PrimaryKey
UniqueColumn1,
UniqueColumn2
from dbo.DuplicatesTable
group by
UniqueColumn1, UniqueColumn1
having count(*) > 1
)
delete d
from dbo.DuplicatesTable d
inner join cte on
d.PrimaryKey > cte.PrimaryKey and
d.UniqueColumn1 = cte.UniqueColumn1 and
d.UniqueColumn2 = cte.UniqueColumn2;
This query showed very good performance for me:
DELETE tbl
FROM
MyTable tbl
WHERE
EXISTS (
SELECT
*
FROM
MyTable tbl2
WHERE
tbl2.SameValue = tbl.SameValue
AND tbl.IdUniqueValue < tbl2.IdUniqueValue
)
it deleted 1M rows in little more than 30sec from a table of 2M (50% duplicates)
Yet another easy solution can be found at the link pasted here. This one easy to grasp and seems to be effective for most of the similar problems. It is for SQL Server though but the concept used is more than acceptable.
Here are the relevant portions from the linked page:
Consider this data:
EMPLOYEE_ID ATTENDANCE_DATE
A001 2011-01-01
A001 2011-01-01
A002 2011-01-01
A002 2011-01-01
A002 2011-01-01
A003 2011-01-01
So how can we delete those duplicate data?
First, insert an identity column in that table by using the following code:
ALTER TABLE dbo.ATTENDANCE ADD AUTOID INT IDENTITY(1,1)
Use the following code to resolve it:
DELETE FROM dbo.ATTENDANCE WHERE AUTOID NOT IN (SELECT MIN(AUTOID) _
FROM dbo.ATTENDANCE GROUP BY EMPLOYEE_ID,ATTENDANCE_DATE)
ROW_NUMBER version works fine for that case without needing to go to the lengths of adding a new column before you begin. –
Septuagesima This is the easiest way to delete duplicate record
DELETE FROM tblemp WHERE id IN
(
SELECT MIN(id) FROM tblemp
GROUP BY title HAVING COUNT(id)>1
)
Use this
WITH tblTemp as
(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() Over(PARTITION BY Name,Department ORDER BY Name)
As RowNumber,* FROM <table_name>
)
DELETE FROM tblTemp where RowNumber >1
Here is another good article on removing duplicates.
It discusses why its hard: "SQL is based on relational algebra, and duplicates cannot occur in relational algebra, because duplicates are not allowed in a set."
The temp table solution, and two mysql examples.
In the future are you going to prevent it at a database level, or from an application perspective. I would suggest the database level because your database should be responsible for maintaining referential integrity, developers just will cause problems ;)
Oh sure. Use a temp table. If you want a single, not-very-performant statement that "works" you can go with:
DELETE FROM MyTable WHERE NOT RowID IN
(SELECT
(SELECT TOP 1 RowID FROM MyTable mt2
WHERE mt2.Col1 = mt.Col1
AND mt2.Col2 = mt.Col2
AND mt2.Col3 = mt.Col3)
FROM MyTable mt)
Basically, for each row in the table, the sub-select finds the top RowID of all rows that are exactly like the row under consideration. So you end up with a list of RowIDs that represent the "original" non-duplicated rows.
I had a table where I needed to preserve non-duplicate rows. I'm not sure on the speed or efficiency.
DELETE FROM myTable WHERE RowID IN (
SELECT MIN(RowID) AS IDNo FROM myTable
GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3
HAVING COUNT(*) = 2 )
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1? –
Erosive The other way is Create a new table with same fields and with Unique Index. Then move all data from old table to new table. Automatically SQL SERVER ignore (there is also an option about what to do if there will be a duplicate value: ignore, interrupt or sth) duplicate values. So we have the same table without duplicate rows. If you don't want Unique Index, after the transfer data you can drop it.
Especially for larger tables you may use DTS (SSIS package to import/export data) in order to transfer all data rapidly to your new uniquely indexed table. For 7 million row it takes just a few minute.
Create new blank table with the same structure
Execute query like this
INSERT INTO tc_category1
SELECT *
FROM tc_category
GROUP BY category_id, application_id
HAVING count(*) > 1
Then execute this query
INSERT INTO tc_category1
SELECT *
FROM tc_category
GROUP BY category_id, application_id
HAVING count(*) = 1
By useing below query we can able to delete duplicate records based on the single column or multiple column. below query is deleting based on two columns. table name is: testing and column names empno,empname
DELETE FROM testing WHERE empno not IN (SELECT empno FROM (SELECT empno, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY empno ORDER BY empno)
AS [ItemNumber] FROM testing) a WHERE ItemNumber > 1)
or empname not in
(select empname from (select empname,row_number() over(PARTITION BY empno ORDER BY empno)
AS [ItemNumber] FROM testing) a WHERE ItemNumber > 1)
Another way of doing this :--
DELETE A
FROM TABLE A,
TABLE B
WHERE A.COL1 = B.COL1
AND A.COL2 = B.COL2
AND A.UNIQUEFIELD > B.UNIQUEFIELD
From the application level (unfortunately). I agree that the proper way to prevent duplication is at the database level through the use of a unique index, but in SQL Server 2005, an index is allowed to be only 900 bytes, and my varchar(2048) field blows that away.
I dunno how well it would perform, but I think you could write a trigger to enforce this, even if you couldn't do it directly with an index. Something like:
-- given a table stories(story_id int not null primary key, story varchar(max) not null)
CREATE TRIGGER prevent_plagiarism
ON stories
after INSERT, UPDATE
AS
DECLARE @cnt AS INT
SELECT @cnt = Count(*)
FROM stories
INNER JOIN inserted
ON ( stories.story = inserted.story
AND stories.story_id != inserted.story_id )
IF @cnt > 0
BEGIN
RAISERROR('plagiarism detected',16,1)
ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
END
Also, varchar(2048) sounds fishy to me (some things in life are 2048 bytes, but it's pretty uncommon); should it really not be varchar(max)?
I would mention this approach as well as it can be helpful, and works in all SQL servers: Pretty often there is only one - two duplicates, and Ids and count of duplicates are known. In this case:
SET ROWCOUNT 1 -- or set to number of rows to be deleted
delete from myTable where RowId = DuplicatedID
SET ROWCOUNT 0
DELETE
FROM
table_name T1
WHERE
rowid > (
SELECT
min(rowid)
FROM
table_name T2
WHERE
T1.column_name = T2.column_name
);
CREATE TABLE car(Id int identity(1,1), PersonId int, CarId int)
INSERT INTO car(PersonId,CarId)
VALUES(1,2),(1,3),(1,2),(2,4)
--SELECT * FROM car
;WITH CTE as(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() over (PARTITION BY personid,carid order by personid,carid) as rn,Id,PersonID,CarId from car)
DELETE FROM car where Id in(SELECT Id FROM CTE WHERE rn>1)
DELETE
FROM MyTable
WHERE NOT EXISTS (
SELECT min(RowID)
FROM Mytable
WHERE (SELECT RowID
FROM Mytable
GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3
))
);
I you want to preview the rows you are about to remove and keep control over which of the duplicate rows to keep. See http://developer.azurewebsites.net/2014/09/better-sql-group-by-find-duplicate-data/
with MYCTE as (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY DuplicateKey1
,DuplicateKey2 -- optional
ORDER BY CreatedAt -- the first row among duplicates will be kept, other rows will be removed
) RN
FROM MyTable
)
DELETE FROM MYCTE
WHERE RN > 1
alter table MyTable add sno int identity(1,1)
delete from MyTable where sno in
(
select sno from (
select *,
RANK() OVER ( PARTITION BY RowID,Col3 ORDER BY sno DESC )rank
From MyTable
)T
where rank>1
)
alter table MyTable
drop column sno
Sometimes a soft delete mechanism is used where a date is recorded to indicate the deleted date. In this case an UPDATE statement may be used to update this field based on duplicate entries.
UPDATE MY_TABLE
SET DELETED = getDate()
WHERE TABLE_ID IN (
SELECT x.TABLE_ID
FROM MY_TABLE x
JOIN (SELECT min(TABLE_ID) id, COL_1, COL_2, COL_3
FROM MY_TABLE d
GROUP BY d.COL_1, d.COL_2, d.COL_3
HAVING count(*) > 1) AS d ON d.COL_1 = x.COL_1
AND d.COL_2 = x.COL_2
AND d.COL_3 = x.COL_3
AND d.TABLE_ID <> x.TABLE_ID
/*WHERE x.COL_4 <> 'D' -- Additional filter*/)
This method has served me well for fairly moderate tables containing ~30 million rows with high and low amounts of duplications.
I know that this question has been already answered, but I've created pretty useful sp which will create a dynamic delete statement for a table duplicates:
CREATE PROCEDURE sp_DeleteDuplicate @tableName varchar(100), @DebugMode int =1
AS
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON;
IF(OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#tableMatrix') is not null) DROP TABLE #tableMatrix;
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY name) as rn,name into #tableMatrix FROM sys.columns where [object_id] = object_id(@tableName) ORDER BY name
DECLARE @MaxRow int = (SELECT MAX(rn) from #tableMatrix)
IF(@MaxRow is null)
RAISERROR ('I wasn''t able to find any columns for this table!',16,1)
ELSE
BEGIN
DECLARE @i int =1
DECLARE @Columns Varchar(max) ='';
WHILE (@i <= @MaxRow)
BEGIN
SET @Columns=@Columns+(SELECT '['+name+'],' from #tableMatrix where rn = @i)
SET @i = @i+1;
END
---DELETE LAST comma
SET @Columns = LEFT(@Columns,LEN(@Columns)-1)
DECLARE @Sql nvarchar(max) = '
WITH cteRowsToDelte
AS (
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY '+@Columns+' ORDER BY ( SELECT 0)) as rowNumber,* FROM '+@tableName
+')
DELETE FROM cteRowsToDelte
WHERE rowNumber > 1;
'
SET NOCOUNT OFF;
IF(@DebugMode = 1)
SELECT @Sql
ELSE
EXEC sp_executesql @Sql
END
END
So if you create table like that:
IF(OBJECT_ID('MyLitleTable') is not null)
DROP TABLE MyLitleTable
CREATE TABLE MyLitleTable
(
A Varchar(10),
B money,
C int
)
---------------------------------------------------------
INSERT INTO MyLitleTable VALUES
('ABC',100,1),
('ABC',100,1), -- only this row should be deleted
('ABC',101,1),
('ABC',100,2),
('ABCD',100,1)
-----------------------------------------------------------
exec sp_DeleteDuplicate 'MyLitleTable',0
It will delete all duplicates from your table. If you run it without the second parameter it will return a SQL statement to run.
If you need to exclude any of the column just run it in the debug mode get the code and modify it whatever you like.
If all the columns in duplicate rows are same then below query can be used to delete the duplicate records.
SELECT DISTINCT * INTO #TemNewTable FROM #OriginalTable
TRUNCATE TABLE #OriginalTable
INSERT INTO #OriginalTable SELECT * FROM #TemNewTable
DROP TABLE #TemNewTable
For the table structure
MyTable
RowID int not null identity(1,1) primary key,
Col1 varchar(20) not null,
Col2 varchar(2048) not null,
Col3 tinyint not null
The query for removing duplicates:
DELETE t1
FROM MyTable t1
INNER JOIN MyTable t2
WHERE t1.RowID > t2.RowID
AND t1.Col1 = t2.Col1
AND t1.Col2=t2.Col2
AND t1.Col3=t2.Col3;
I am assuming that
RowIDis kind of auto-increment and rest of the columns have duplicate values.
Now lets look elasticalsearch table which this tables has duplicated rows and Id is identical uniq field. We know if some id exist by a group criteria then we can delete other rows outscope of this group. My manner shows this criteria.
So many case of this thread are in the like state of mine. Just change your target group criteria according your case for deleting repeated (duplicated) rows.
DELETE
FROM elasticalsearch
WHERE Id NOT IN
(SELECT min(Id)
FROM elasticalsearch
GROUP BY FirmId,FilterSearchString
)
cheers
I think this would be helpfull. Here, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY res1.Title ORDER BY res1.Id)as num has been used to differentiate the duplicate rows.
delete FROM
(SELECT res1.*,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY res1.Title ORDER BY res1.Id)as num
FROM
(select * from [dbo].[tbl_countries])as res1
)as res2
WHERE res2.num > 1
I found this query easier to read and replace.
DELETE
FROM
TABLE_NAME
WHERE FIRST_COLUMNS
IN(
SELECT * FROM
( SELECT MIN(FIRST_COLUMNS)
FROM TABLE_NAME
GROUP BY
FIRST_COLUMNS,
SECOND_COLUMNS
HAVING COUNT(FIRST_COLUMNS) > 1
) temp
)
note: It's good to simulate query before you run it.
First you can select minimum RowId's using MIN() and Group By. We will keep these Rows.
SELECT MIN(RowId) as RowId
FROM MyTable
GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3
And Delete RowId's those are not in selected minimum RowId's using
DELETE FROM MyTable WHERE RowId Not IN()
Final query:
DELETE FROM MyTable WHERE RowId Not IN(
SELECT MIN(RowId) as RowId
FROM MyTable
GROUP BY Col1, Col2, Col3
)
You can also check my answer in SQL Fiddle
A very simple way to delete duplicate rows of table in postgresql.
DELETE FROM table1 a
USING table1 b
WHERE a.id < b.id
AND a.column1 = b.column1
AND a.column2 = b.column2;
Delete Duplicate record
Greater Than operator in this case delete all record except first record
DELETE u1 FROM users u1 JOIN users u2 WHERE u1.id > u2.id AND u1.email=u2.email
< Less than operator in this case delete all record except last record
DELETE u1 FROM users u1 JOIN users u2 WHERE u1.id < u2.id AND u1.email=u2.email
Create another table that will consist of original values:
CREATE TABLE table2 AS SELECT *, COUNT(*) FROM table1 GROUP BY name HAVING COUNT (*) > 0
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DELETE FROMa CTE term directly. See https://mcmap.net/q/46349/-postgresql-with-delete-quot-relation-does-not-exists-quot/398670 – MindedROWID()function by the RowID column, if any) – Nickola