achowe, Why won't Npeeters query work for you? That's a nice little piece of code, deletes all records except the one with the maximum date value.

DELETE t1

FROM MyTable t1

JOIN MyTable t2 ON t1.Unique_ID = t2.Unique_ID AND t1.DateField < t2.DateField

And, if you have an identity column and you insert earliest dates first then you should use that instead. SQL handles integers a lot better than dates.

--something like...

DELETE t1

FROM MyTable t1

LEFT JOIN

(Select max(t2.Identity_ID) Identity_ID

From MyTable t2 (nolock)

Group by t2.Unique_ID) t2 on t2.Identity_ID = t1.Identity_ID

Where t2.Unique_ID is null