removing duplicates out of large databas

[Anon]

anyone know a good way to remove duplicate entrys out of a very large database. say a database with over 40 thousand rows for example.

thanks.
ryza

[nostradamus]

Do the following for each row, row after row :

select the row into variables

delete all rows in the database which are the row or duplicates of it

write the row back into the db.

[Anon]

You can probably use a variation of one of the following:

select distinct * into newtable from oldtable

or
insert into newtable (field1,field2,fieldn) select field1, field2, fieldn from oldtable