Deleting duplicate rows on MySQL, getting a max row error - mysql

Question

I am deleting duplicate rows on MySQL and only leaving behind the old row (least id) but I am getting a max row error
DELETE n1
FROM item_audit n1, item_audit n2
WHERE n1.id > n2.id AND n1.description = n2.description

Answer 1

Keep in mind, with that join condition you are joining each row to every row before it (with the same description). This is one of those cases where a subquery will be much more effective than a join.
DELETE a
FROM item_audit a
WHERE (a.id, a.description) NOT IN
(SELECT * FROM
(
SELECT MIN(id), description
FROM item_audit
GROUP BY description
) AS realSubQ
)
Actually, assuming id is unique, it can even be simplier:
DELETE a
FROM item_audit a
WHERE a.id NOT IN
(SELECT * FROM
( SELECT MIN(id)
FROM item_audit
GROUP BY description
) AS realSubQ
)
As you discovered, MySQL needs to be "tricked" into being able to use the delete target in a subquery with the extra select * wrapper.
Alternatively, a join on the subquery could be used to reduce the size of the intermediate result set created behind the scenes.
DELETE a
FROM item_audit a
LEFT JOIN (SELECT MIN(id) AS firstId FROM item_audit GROUP BY description) AS aFirst
ON a.id = aFirst.firstId
WHERE aFirst.firstId IS NULL
;
If that fails, you can insert the first id's into a temp table, and should be able to do subquery version with that.
CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE `old_ids`
SELECT MIN(ID) AS id
FROM item_audit
GROUP BY description;
DELETE a
FROM item_audit a
LEFT JOIN old_ids ON a.id = old_ids.id
WHERE old_ids.id IS NULL
;
In any of these cases, a LIMIT clause can be placed very last to accomplish an incremental delete. The last, temp table, version has the benefit that the subquery will not need re-evaluated after every incremental delete (and the temporary table can be indexed to speed things up as well).