PROBLEM: Cannot rebuild index!!

Hi all.

I have a problem which I'm not sure how to deal with.

Here's the scenario (8i on AIX):

We have a system wherein some data warehouse tables are truncated and repopulated each night with fresh data.

This morning, a unique index on one of these tables was in an unuseable state. I attempted to rebuild it, and got the error ORA-01452: cannot CREATE UNIQUE INDEX; duplicate keys found.

I've looked on Metalink, and The only sense I can make of this is that when the new data was inserted, a duplicate row was created.

I believe that this data insert was done via SQLLoader. How the inserts succeeded and got past the unique index, I'm not sure.

There's a script on metalink to 'delete' duplicate rows (included below), but I would like to identify the duplicates before deleting them. I have changed the script from 'delete from' to 'select * from', so I can view the data. But I've so far waited 10 minutes for results, and for a 17000 column table that strikes me as not very promising.

So, in short, my question is: How should I deal with suspected duplicate rows when my indexes are not working?

Hope someone can help!

BD

***here's the Metalink script***

REM This is an example SQL*Plus Script to delete duplicate rows from REM a table.
REM
set echo off
set verify off heading off
undefine t
undefine c
prompt
prompt
prompt Enter name of table with duplicate rows prompt
accept t prompt 'Table: '
prompt
select 'Table '||upper('&&t') from dual; describe &&t
prompt
prompt Enter name(s) of column(s) which should be unique. If more than prompt one column is specified , you MUST separate with commas. prompt
accept c prompt 'Column(s): '
prompt
delete from &&t
where rowid not in (select min(rowid) from &&t group by &&c) / Received on Fri Dec 30 2005 - 13:21:48 CST