Finding & updating duplicate rows - sql

Question

I need to implement a query (or maybe a stored procedure) that will perform soft de-duplication of data in one of my tables. If any two records are similar enough, I need to "squash" them: deactivate one and update another.
The similarity is based on a score. Score is calculated the following way:
from both records, take values of column A,
values equal? add A1 to the score,
values not equal? subtract A2 from the score,
move on to the next column.
As soon as all desired value pairs checked:
is resulting score more then X?
yes – records are duplicate, mark older record as "duplicate"; append its id to a duplicate_ids column to the newer record.
no – do nothing.
How would I approach solving this task in SQL?
The table in question is called people. People records are entered by different admins. The de-duplication process exists to make sure no two same people exists in the system.
The motivation for the task is simple: performance.
Right now the solution is implemented in scripting language via several sub-par SQL queries and logic on top of them. However, the volume of data is expected to grow to tens of millions of records, and script will eventually become very slow (it should run via cron every night).
I'm using postgresql.

Answer 1

It appears that the de-duplication is generally a tough problem.
I found this: https://github.com/dedupeio/dedupe. There's a good description of how this works: https://dedupe.io/documentation/how-it-works.html.
I'm going to explore dedupe. I'm not going to try to implement it in SQL.

Answer 2

If I get you correctly, this could help.
You can use PostgreSQL Window Functions to get all the duplicates and use "weights" to determine which records are duplicated so you can do whatever you like with them.
Here is an example:
-- Temporal table for the test, primary key is id and
-- we have A,B,C columns with a creation date:
CREATE TEMP TABLE test
(id serial, "colA" text, "colB" text, "colC" text,creation_date date);
-- Insert test data:
INSERT INTO test ("colA", "colB", "colC",creation_date) VALUES
('A','B','C','2017-05-01'),('D','E','F','2017-06-01'),('A','B','D','2017-08-01'),
('A','B','R','2017-09-01'),('C','J','K','2017-09-01'),('A','C','J','2017-10-01'),
('C','W','K','2017-10-01'),('R','T','Y','2017-11-01');
-- SELECT * FROM test
-- id | colA | colB | colC | creation_date
-- ----+-------+-------+-------+---------------
-- 1 | A | B | C | 2017-05-01
-- 2 | D | E | F | 2017-06-01
-- 3 | A | B | D | 2017-08-01 <-- Duplicate A,B
-- 4 | A | B | R | 2017-09-01 <-- Duplicate A,B
-- 5 | C | J | K | 2017-09-01
-- 6 | A | C | J | 2017-10-01
-- 7 | C | W | K | 2017-10-01 <-- Duplicate C,K
-- 8 | R | T | Y | 2017-11-01
-- Here is the query you can use to get the id's from the duplicate records
-- (the comments are backwards):
-- third, you select the id of the duplicates
SELECT id
FROM
(
-- Second, select all the columns needed and weight the duplicates.
-- You don't need to select every column, if only the id is needed
-- then you can only select the id
-- Query this SQL to see results:
SELECT
id,"colA", "colB", "colC",creation_date,
-- The weights are simple, if the row count is more than 1 then assign 1,
-- if the row count is 1 then assign 0, sum all and you have a
-- total weight of 'duplicity'.
CASE WHEN "num_colA">1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN "num_colB">1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END +
CASE WHEN "num_colC">1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END as weight
FROM
(
-- First, select using window functions and assign a row number.
-- You can run this query separately to see results
SELECT *,
-- NOTE that it is order by id, if needed you can order by creation_date instead
row_number() OVER(PARTITION BY "colA" ORDER BY id) as "num_colA",
row_number() OVER(PARTITION BY "colB" ORDER BY id) as "num_colB",
row_number() OVER(PARTITION BY "colC" ORDER BY id) as "num_colC"
FROM test ORDER BY id
) count_column_duplicates
) duplicates
-- HERE IS DEFINED WHICH WEIGHT TO SELECT, for the test,
-- id defined the ones that are more than 1
WHERE weight>1
-- The total SQL returns all the duplicates acording to the selected weight:
-- id
-- ----
-- 3
-- 4
-- 7
You can add this query to a stored procedure so you can run it whenever you like. Hope it helps.