thanks

RBAR...didn't know that...!

I did explain the plan for both and believe it or not the

delete where NOT IN is less cost

Is cost the indicator to look at for the execution...

What is RBAR?

I agree performance may be better....but probably in most cases

it wouldn't matter on tables with less than 20,000 records

I think the author meant to say that the ID column is unique

his query is:

--Find duplicate records

--The result of this query is all the duplicate records whose Id is greater.

select...

delete * from employee where id NOT IN (select min(id) from employee group by employeeno,employeeid)

This will delete all duplicated records and leave one unduplicated record

RickO