In SQL / MySQL, can a Left Outer Join be used to find out the duplicates when there is no Primary ID

Posted by Jian Lin on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Jian Lin
Published on 2010-04-27T14:57:08Z Indexed on 2010/04/27 15:03 UTC
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I would like to try using Outer Join to find out duplicates in a table:

If a table has Primary Index ID, then the following outer join can find out the duplicate names:

mysql> select * from gifts;
+--------+------------+-----------------+---------------------+
| giftID | name       | filename        | effectiveTime       |
+--------+------------+-----------------+---------------------+
|      2 | teddy bear | bear.jpg        | 2010-04-24 04:36:03 |
|      3 | coffee     | coffee123.jpg   | 2010-04-24 05:10:43 |
|      6 | beer       | beer_glass.png  | 2010-04-24 05:18:12 |
|     10 | heart      | heart_shape.jpg | 2010-04-24 05:11:29 |
|     11 | ice tea    | icetea.jpg      | 2010-04-24 05:19:53 |
|     12 | cash       | cash.png        | 2010-04-24 05:27:44 |
|     13 | chocolate  | choco.jpg       | 2010-04-25 04:04:31 |
|     14 | coffee     | latte.jpg       | 2010-04-27 05:49:52 |
|     15 | coffee     | espresso.jpg    | 2010-04-27 06:03:03 |
+--------+------------+-----------------+---------------------+
9 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select * from gifts g1 LEFT JOIN (select * from gifts group by name) g2 
         on g1.giftID = g2.giftID where g2.giftID IS NULL;
+--------+--------+--------------+---------------------+--------+------+----------+---------------+
| giftID | name   | filename     | effectiveTime       | giftID | name | filename | effectiveTime |
+--------+--------+--------------+---------------------+--------+------+----------+---------------+
|     14 | coffee | latte.jpg    | 2010-04-27 05:49:52 |   NULL | NULL | NULL     | NULL          |
|     15 | coffee | espresso.jpg | 2010-04-27 06:03:03 |   NULL | NULL | NULL     | NULL          |
+--------+--------+--------------+---------------------+--------+------+----------+---------------+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)

But what if the table doesn't have a Primary Index ID, then can an outer join still be used to find out duplicates?

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