First of all, I doubt that the result it not accurate? Seem like there are Three 'Sam' from the original table. But it is not critical to the question.
Then here we come for the question itself. Based on your table, the best way to show duplicate value is to use count(*)
and Group by
clause. The query would look like this
SELECT OrderNo, shoppername, amountPayed, city, item, count(*) as RepeatTimes FROM dbo.sales GROUP BY OrderNo, shoppername, amountPayed, city, item HAVING COUNT(*) > 1
The reason is that all columns together from your table uniquely identified each record, which means the records will be considered as duplicate only when all values from each column are exactly the same, also you want to show all fields for duplicate records, so the group by
will not miss any column, otherwise yes because you can only select
columns that participate in the 'group by' clause.
Now I would like to give you any example for With...Row_Number()Over(...)
, which is using table expression together with Row_Number function.
Suppose you have a nearly same table but with one extra column called Shipping Date, and the value may change even the rest are the same. Here it is:
OrderNo shoppername amountpayed city Item Shipping Date
1 Sam 10 A Iphone 2016-01-01
1 Sam 10 A Iphone 2016-02-02
1 Sam 5 A Ipod 2016-03-03
2 John 20 B Macbook 2016-04-04
3 John 25 B Macbookair 2016-05-05
4 Jack 5 A Ipod 2016-06-06
Notice that row# 2 is not a duplicate one if you still take all columns as a unit. But what if you want to treat them as duplicate as well in this case? You should use With...Row_Number()Over(...)
, and the query would look like this:
WITH TABLEEXPRESSION
AS
(SELECT *,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY OrderNo, shoppername, amountPayed, city, item ORDER BY [Shipping Date] as Identifier) --if you consider the one with late shipping date as the duplicate
FROM dbo.sales)
SELECT * FROM TABLEEXPRESSION
WHERE Identifier !=1 --or use '>1'
The above query will give result together with Shipping Date, for example:
OrderNo shoppername amountpayed city Item Shipping Date Identifier
1 Sam 10 A Iphone 2016-02-02 2
Note this one is different from the one with 2016-01-01, and the reason why 2016-02-02 has been filtered out is PARTITION BY OrderNo, shoppername, amountPayed, city, item ORDER BY [Shipping Date] as Identifier
, and Shipping Date is NOT one of the column that need to be took care of for duplicate records, which means the one with 2016-02-02 still could be a perfect result for your question.
Now summarize it little bit, using count(*)
and Group by
clause together is the best choice when you only want to show all columns from Group by
clause as the result, otherwise you will miss the columns that do not participate in group by
.
While For With...Row_Number()Over(...)
, it is suitable in every scenario that you want to find duplicate records, however, it is little bit complicated to write the query and little bit over engineered compared to the former one.
If your purpose is to delete duplicate records from table, you have to use the later WITH...ROW_NUMBER()OVER(...)...DELETE FROM...WHERE
one.
Hope this helps!