How to delete duplicate rows in SQL Server?

Question

How can I delete duplicate rows where no unique row id exists?

My table is

col1  col2 col3 col4 col5 col6 col7
john  1          


        

Answer 1

If you have the ability to add a column to the table temporarily, this was a solution that worked for me:

ALTER TABLE dbo.DUPPEDTABLE ADD RowID INT NOT NULL IDENTITY(1,1)

Then perform a DELETE using a combination of MIN and GROUP BY

DELETE b
FROM dbo.DUPPEDTABLE b
WHERE b.RowID NOT IN (
                     SELECT MIN(RowID) AS RowID
                     FROM dbo.DUPPEDTABLE a WITH (NOLOCK)
                     GROUP BY a.ITEM_NUMBER,
                              a.CHARACTERISTIC,
                              a.INTVALUE,
                              a.FLOATVALUE,
                              a.STRINGVALUE
                 );

Verify that the DELETE performed correctly:

SELECT a.ITEM_NUMBER,
    a.CHARACTERISTIC,
    a.INTVALUE,
    a.FLOATVALUE,
    a.STRINGVALUE, COUNT(*)--MIN(RowID) AS RowID
FROM dbo.DUPPEDTABLE a WITH (NOLOCK)
GROUP BY a.ITEM_NUMBER,
    a.CHARACTERISTIC,
    a.INTVALUE,
    a.FLOATVALUE,
    a.STRINGVALUE
ORDER BY COUNT(*) DESC 

The result should have no rows with a count greater than 1. Finally, remove the rowid column:

ALTER TABLE dbo.DUPPEDTABLE DROP COLUMN RowID;