Handle Duplicate Records

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Handle Duplicate Records

erik-507089

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December 28, 2008 at 6:33 pm

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Comments posted to this topic are about the item Handle Duplicate Records

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jnichols-797753 Ten Centuries Points: 1085 More actions · Answer 1

I've found the easy way to remove duplicates is with the UNION statement:

select * into aTempTable

from SourceTable

UNION

select * from SourceTable

GO

truncate table SourceTable

insert into SourceTable

select * from aTempTable

GO

Does this work for you?

tlocke-512364 Valued Member Points: 50 More actions · Answer 2

Sorry I am still a newbie when it comes to programming like this...

What is the "@ID ..." signify. I figured out the ListOfFields but just can't figure out what the "@ID..." signifies.

Thank You

Ted

erik-507089 Valued Member Points: 51 More actions · Answer 3

No problem. Anything with an @ in front is a variable. @ID would hold a value for each row of the table that somehow uniquely identifies that row. So, the cursor has you looping through all the duplicate values. Each time it gets to "Fetch Next Into @ID", it puts the next value into the variable.

Then, the first time through the loop, it assigns that to @KeepID. And any subsequent loops, you would run all your logic to merge / move / delete the duplicate record.

tlocke-512364 Valued Member Points: 50 More actions · Answer 4

So the "..." after the "@ID" is not needed?

I do understand the basics of variables, but am still learning how to use them properly.

Thanks Ted

erik-507089 Valued Member Points: 51 More actions · Answer 5

No. Sorry, the example is just pseudo-code, you'll have to replace some stuff to make it actually work.

I put the '...' there in case you wanted to add more variables than just @ID ("FETCH NEXT INTO @ID, @Whatever, @Something). You could use the other variable in whatever processing you need to run, or if the primary key on that table is multiple columns you'd need to grab all of them just to delete.