How to remove duplicates from table using SQL query

Question

I have a table which is as follows:

emp_name   emp_address  sex  matial_status  
uuuu       eee          m    s
iiii       iii          f    s
uuuu       eee          m    s

I want to remove the duplicate entries based on 3 fields emp_name, emp_address and sex. and my resultant table (after removing the duplicates) should look like -

emp_name    emp_address   sex   marital_status
uuuu        eee           m     s
iiii        iii           f     s

I am not able to recall how to write a SQL Query for this. an anyone pls help?

Answer 1

I would create a new table with a unique index over the columns that you want to keep unique. Then do an insert from the old table into the new, ignoring the warnings about duplicated rows. Lastly, I would drop (or rename) the old table and replace it with the new table. In MySQL, this would look like

CREATE TABLE tmp LIKE mytable;
ALTER TABLE tmp ADD UNIQUE INDEX myindex (emp_name, emp_address, sex, marital_status);
INSERT IGNORE INTO tmp SELECT * FROM mytable;
DROP TABLE mytable;
RENAME TABLE tmp TO mytable;

Or something similar (this is totally untested).