How to update duplicate rows in a table n postgresql - postgresql

Question

I have created synthetic data for a typical call center.
Below is the screenshot of the table I have created.
Table 1:
Problem statement: Since this is completely random data, I noticed that there are some customers who are being assigned to the same agents whenever they call again.
So using this query I was able to test such a case and count the number of times agents are being repeated for each customer.
select agentid, customerid, count(customerid) from aa_dev.calls group by agentid, customerid having count(customerid) > 1 ;
Table 2
I have a separate agents table to called aa_dev.agents in which the agent's ids are stored
Now I want to replace the agentid for such cases, such that if agentid is repeated 6 times for a single customer then 5 of the times the agent id should be updated with any other agentid from the table but call time shouldn't be overlapping That means the agent we are replacing with should not be busy on the time the call is going one.
I have assigned row numbers to each repeated ones.
WITH cte AS (
SELECT *, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY agentid, customerid ORDER BY random()) rn,
COUNT(*) OVER (PARTITION BY agentid, customerid) cnt
FROM aa_dev.calls
)
SELECT agentid, customerid, rn
FROM cte
WHERE cnt > 1;
This way I could visualize the repetition clearly.
So I don't want to update row 1 but the rest.
Is there any way I can acheive this? Can I use the row number and write a query according to the row number to update rownum 2 onwards row one by one with each row having a unique agent?

Answer 1

If you don't want duplicates in your artificial data, it's probably better to not generate them.
But if you already have a table with duplicates and want to work on the duplicates, either updating them or deleting, here is the easy way:
You need a unique ID for each updated row. If you don't have it,
add it temporarily. Then you can use this pattern to update all duplicates
except the first one:
To add artificial id column to preexisting table, use:
ALTER TABLE calls ADD id serial;
In my case I generated a test table with 100 random rows:
CREATE TEMP TABLE calls (id serial, agentid int, customerid int);
INSERT INTO calls (agentid, customerid)
SELECT (random()*10)::int, (random()*10)::int
FROM generate_series(1, 100) n;
Define what constitutes a duplicate and find duplicates in data:
SELECT agentid, customerid, count(*), array_agg(id) id
FROM calls
GROUP BY 1,2 HAVING count(*)>1
ORDER BY 1,2;
Update all the duplicate rows except first one with NULLs:
UPDATE calls SET agentid = whatever_needed
FROM (
SELECT array_agg(id) id, min(id) idmin FROM calls
GROUP BY agentid, customerid HAVING count(*)>1
) AS dup
WHERE calls.id = ANY(dup.id) AND calls.id <> dup.idmin;
Alternatively, remove all duplicates except first one:
DELETE FROM calls
USING (
SELECT array_agg(id) id, min(id) idmin FROM calls
GROUP BY agentid, customerid HAVING count(*)>1
) AS dup
WHERE calls.id = ANY(dup.id) AND calls.id <> dup.idmin;