SQL: How to find duplicates based on two fields? - sql

Question

I have rows in an Oracle database table which should be unique for a combination of two fields but the unique constrain is not set up on the table so I need to find all rows which violate the constraint myself using SQL. Unfortunately my meager SQL skills aren't up to the task.
My table has three columns which are relevant: entity_id, station_id, and obs_year. For each row the combination of station_id and obs_year should be unique, and I want to find out if there are rows which violate this by flushing them out with an SQL query.
I have tried the following SQL (suggested by this previous question) but it doesn't work for me (I get ORA-00918 column ambiguously defined):
SELECT
entity_id, station_id, obs_year
FROM
mytable t1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT entity_id, station_id, obs_year FROM mytable
GROUP BY entity_id, station_id, obs_year HAVING COUNT(*) > 1) dupes
ON
t1.station_id = dupes.station_id AND
t1.obs_year = dupes.obs_year
Can someone suggest what I'm doing wrong, and/or how to solve this?

Answer 1

SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT t.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY station_id, obs_year ORDER BY entity_id) AS rn
FROM mytable t
)
WHERE rn > 1

Answer 2

SELECT entity_id, station_id, obs_year
FROM mytable t1
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 from mytable t2 Where
t1.station_id = t2.station_id
AND t1.obs_year = t2.obs_year
AND t1.RowId <> t2.RowId)

Answer 3

Change the 3 fields in the initial select to be
SELECT
t1.entity_id, t1.station_id, t1.obs_year

Answer 4

Re-write of your query
SELECT
t1.entity_id, t1.station_id, t1.obs_year
FROM
mytable t1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT entity_id, station_id, obs_year FROM mytable
GROUP BY entity_id, station_id, obs_year HAVING COUNT(*) > 1) dupes
ON
t1.station_id = dupes.station_id AND
t1.obs_year = dupes.obs_year
I think the ambiguous column error (ORA-00918) was because you were selecting columns whose names appeared in both the table and the subquery, but you did not specifiy if you wanted it from dupes or from mytable (aliased as t1).

Answer 5

Could you not create a new table that includes the unique constraint, and then copy across the data row by row, ignoring failures?

Answer 6

You need to specify the table for the columns in the main select. Also, assuming entity_id is the unique key for mytable and is irrelevant to finding duplicates, you should not be grouping on it in the dupes subquery.
Try:
SELECT t1.entity_id, t1.station_id, t1.obs_year
FROM mytable t1
INNER JOIN (
SELECT station_id, obs_year FROM mytable
GROUP BY station_id, obs_year HAVING COUNT(*) > 1) dupes
ON
t1.station_id = dupes.station_id AND
t1.obs_year = dupes.obs_year

Answer 7

SELECT *
FROM (
SELECT t.*, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY station_id, obs_year ORDER BY entity_id) AS rn
FROM mytable t
)
WHERE rn > 1
by Quassnoi is the most efficient for large tables.
I had this analysis of cost :
SELECT a.dist_code, a.book_date, a.book_no
FROM trn_refil_book a
WHERE EXISTS (SELECT 1 from trn_refil_book b Where
a.dist_code = b.dist_code and a.book_date = b.book_date and a.book_no = b.book_no
AND a.RowId <> b.RowId)
;
gave a cost of 1322341
SELECT a.dist_code, a.book_date, a.book_no
FROM trn_refil_book a
INNER JOIN (
SELECT b.dist_code, b.book_date, b.book_no FROM trn_refil_book b
GROUP BY b.dist_code, b.book_date, b.book_no HAVING COUNT(*) > 1) c
ON
a.dist_code = c.dist_code and a.book_date = c.book_date and a.book_no = c.book_no
;
gave a cost of 1271699
while
SELECT dist_code, book_date, book_no
FROM (
SELECT t.dist_code, t.book_date, t.book_no, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY t.book_date, t.book_no
ORDER BY t.dist_code) AS rn
FROM trn_refil_book t
) p
WHERE p.rn > 1
;
gave a cost of 1021984
The table was not indexed....

Answer 8

SELECT entity_id, station_id, obs_year
FROM mytable
GROUP BY entity_id, station_id, obs_year
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
Specify the fields to find duplicates on both the SELECT and the GROUP BY.
It works by using GROUP BY to find any rows that match any other rows based on the specified Columns.
The HAVING COUNT(*) > 1 says that we are only interested in seeing any rows that occur more than 1 time (and are therefore duplicates)

Answer 9

I thought a lot of the solutions here were cumbersome and tough to understand since I had a 3 column primary key constraint and needed to find the duplicates. So here's an option
SELECT id, name, value, COUNT(*) FROM db_name.table_name
GROUP BY id, name, value
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1

Answer 10

I'm surprised there aren't any answers here that use a CTE (Common Table Expression)
WITH cte as (
SELECT
ROW_NUMBER()
OVER(
PARTITION BY Last_Name, First_Name order by BIRTHDATE)
AS RN,
Employee_number, First_Name, Last_Name, BirthDate,
SUM(1)
OVER(
PARTITION BY Last_Name, First_Name
ORDER BY BIRTHDATE ROWS BETWEEN UNBOUNDED PRECEDING
AND UNBOUNDED FOLLOWING)
AS CNT
FROM
employment)
select * from cte where cnt > 1
Not only will this find duplicates (on first and last name only), it will tell you how many there are.