Removing duplicate rows from table in Oracle

Question

I\'m testing something in Oracle and populated a table with some sample data, but in the process I accidentally loaded duplicate records, so now I can\'t create a primary ke

Answer 1

To select the duplicates only the query format can be:

SELECT GroupFunction(column1), GroupFunction(column2),..., 
COUNT(column1), column1, column2...
FROM our_table
GROUP BY column1, column2, column3...
HAVING COUNT(column1) > 1

So the correct query as per other suggestion is:

DELETE FROM tablename a
      WHERE a.ROWID > ANY (SELECT b.ROWID
                             FROM tablename b
                            WHERE a.fieldname = b.fieldname
                              AND a.fieldname2 = b.fieldname2
                              AND ....so on.. to identify the duplicate rows....)

This query will keep the oldest record in the database for the criteria chosen in the WHERE CLAUSE.

Oracle Certified Associate (2008)