>I inherited a project from someone who wrote a long convoluted program to look for duplicates in a table. I'm wondering if it could be done easier using SQL. Here's an example of the problem we have frequently:
>
>Record 1
>------------------------
>JOHN
>L
>SMITH
>1234 ANYWHERE LANE
>HERESVILLE
>PA
>16555
>------------------------
>
>Record 2
>------------------------
>JOHN
>
>SMITH
>1234 ANYWHERE LN
>HERESVILLE
>PA
>16555-2345
>------------------------
>
>Records 1 and 2 are the same person, but a SELECT DISTINCT does not eliminate one of them because the middle initial, address line, and zip code are not identical. My question is this, is there a way with SQL to identify these two records, which are in the same file, as "possible" duplicates which I could then display to a user for them to decide what to do with them?
>
>Thanks.

Hi,

You just include the first name in fieldlist.

SELECT DISTINCT Firstname FROM ...