I would really appreciate your help with the following problem:
I have a table (stock_header) which has 3 columns of interest
catalogue_code purcha stock_
-------------- ------ ------
1001 Box Box
1001 Box Box
1002 EA EA
1002 Set Set
1002 Kit Kit
1004 Set Set
I would like to extract the information using the following rules:
- If a catalogue_code is a duplicate and all its purcha and stock_ attributes have the same value (e.g catalogue_code 1001), select any record.
- If a catalogue_code is a duplicate and some of its purcha and stock_ attributes contain different values (e.g catalogue_code 1002), select the record that has purcha = 'EA', stock_ = 'EA'.
I am having difficulties implementing this logic in T-SQL.
Update: Just wanted to mention that the original table doesn't have a primary key. The removal of duplicates is done so that the catalogue_code can be the primary key.
Update2: Unfortunately, answers by Nick and Elian do not solve the problem. Here is my pseudo code for a potential implementation:
- Find all the duplicated catalogue_codes
- For each duplicate do:
- Get any pair of stock_ and purcha attributes. Compare the selected pair to all other pairs and store your results in a variable (numberOfIdenticalRecords).
- If numberOfIdenticalRecords = 1 (meaning that all the other records have distinct stock_ and purcha values). In this case, select the record that has purcha = 'EA' and stock_ = 'EA'.
- Else if numberOfIdenticalRecords > 1 (meaning that all the records contain the same stock_ and purcha values), select any record.
One big drawback of this implementation is that it is procedural whereas SQL is declarative. Even if it's possible to implement it, chances are that it's going to be hard to understand and maintain. Am I over thinking the whole thing? Is there a simpler way of doing it?