great examples!

If only duplicates need to be removed the ROW_NUMBER() may not be needed.

WITH cteEmployeeOrderedByMyRank AS

(SELECT RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY EMPID,FNAME,LNAME ORDER BY REFDATE ASC) AS PartitionRank

, *

FROM EMPLOYEE

-- WHERE 1 = 1

)

DELETE FROM cteEmployeeOrderedByMyRank

WHERE PartitionRank > 1 ;

It surely seems to be much faster than the cursor based apporach.