Delete duplicate records in SQL Server?

Question

Consider a column named EmployeeName table Employee. The goal is to delete repeated records, based on the EmployeeName field.

EmployeeName
------------
Anand
Anand
Anil
Dipak
Anil
Dipak
Dipak
Anil

Using one query, I want to delete the records which are repeated.

How can this be done with TSQL in SQL Server?

Answer 1

You can do this with window functions. It will order the dupes by empId, and delete all but the first one.

delete x from (
  select *, rn=row_number() over (partition by EmployeeName order by empId)
  from Employee 
) x
where rn > 1;

Run it as a select to see what would be deleted:

select *
from (
  select *, rn=row_number() over (partition by EmployeeName order by empId)
  from Employee 
) x
where rn > 1;