Microsoft SQL server does not support a method of identifying the row numbers for records stored on disk, although there are a number of different techniques to associate a sequential number with a row. You might want to display a set of records where each record is listed with a generated number that identifies the records position relative to the rest of the records in the set. In other cases, you may want to sequentially number groupings of records where each specific set of records are numbered starting at 1 and incremented by 1 until the next set is reached, where the sequence starts over. This article will show a number of different methods of assigning a record sequence number to records returned from a query.
Sequentially Numbering Records by Having an Identity Column
Even though Microsoft SQL Server does not physically have a row number stored with each record, you can include one of your own. To have your own record number, all you need to do is include an identity column in your table definition. When you define the identity column, you can specify an initial seed value of 1, and an increment value of 1. By doing this, the identity column will sequentially number each row inserted into the table. Let me show you a simple CREATE TABLE statement that defines a ROW_NUMBER column, which will sequentially number records.
SET NOCOUNT ON CREATE TABLE SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE
( RECORD_NUMBER INT IDENTITY (1,1), DESCRIPTION VARCHAR(40)) INSERT INTO SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE VALUES('FIRST RECORD') INSERT INTO SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE VALUES('SECOND RECORD') INSERT INTO SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE VALUES('THIRD RECORD') INSERT INTO SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE VALUES('FOURTH RECORD') INSERT INTO SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE VALUES('FIFTH RECORD') SELECT * FROM SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE DROP TABLE SEQ_NUMBER_EXAMPLE
When you run this code it produces the following output:
RECORD_NUMBER DESCRIPTION
------------- ---------------------------------------- 1 FIRST RECORD 2 SECOND RECORD 3 THIRD RECORD 4 FOURTH RECORD 5 FIFTH RECORD
Now as you can see, each record has been automatically numbered using the identity column RECORD_NUMBER. One thing to consider when using this method is that there is no guarantee that these numbers are physically stored next to each other on disk, unless there is a clustered index on the RECORD_NUMBER column. If you use this method either create a clustered index, or have an ORDER BY RECORD_NUMBER clause to ensure that the records are returned in sequential order. Also remember if you should delete records, then your sequential number will have missing values for each record deleted.
Now you might not have designed your table to have an identity column, or even want to place one on your existing table, so another option is to insert the records you desired to have a sequence number into a temporary table. Here is some code that takes the Northwind.dbo.Employees table and copies only the Sales Representatives into a temporary table. This example uses this temporary table with a rank identity column to show a ranking of Sales Representatives by HireDate.
create table
#HireDate (rank int identity, HireDate datetime, LastName nvarchar(20), FirstName nvarchar(20) ) insert into #HireDate (HireDate, LastName, FirstName) select Hiredate, LastName, Firstname from northwind.dbo.employees where Title = 'Sales Representative' order by HireDate Select cast(rank as char(4)) as Rank, cast(hiredate as varchar(23)) as HireDate, LastName, FirstName from #HireDate Drop table #HireDate
The output of this example looks like this:
Rank HireDate LastName FirstName
----------------------------------------------------- 1 Apr 1 1992 12:00AM Leverling Janet 2 May 1 1992 12:00AM Davolio Nancy 3 May 3 1993 12:00AM Peacock Margaret 4 Oct 17 1993 12:00AM Suyama Michael 5 Jan 2 1994 12:00AM King Robert 6 Nov 15 1994 12:00AM Dodsworth Anne
Ok, so you don’t want to create a temporary table, but instead you want to use the existing table to identify the row numbers for each record. You can still do this provided you don’t have a problem with altering the table. To have row numbers, all you need to do is alter the table to add an identity column with an initial seed value of 1 and an increment of 1. This will number your rows from 1 to N where N is the number of rows in the table. Let’s look at an example of this method using the pub.dbo.titles table.
set nocount on alter table pubs
.dbo.titles add rownum int identity(1,1) go select rownum, title from pubs.dbo.titles where rownum < 6 order by rownum go alter table pubs.dbo.titles drop column rownum
Note this example first alters the table, then displays the first 5 rows, and lastly drops the identity column. This way the row numbers are produced, displayed, and finally removed, so in effect the table is left as it was prior to running the script. The output from the above script would look like this:
rownum title
------------------------------------------------------ 1 But Is It User Friendly? 2 Computer Phobic AND Non-Phobic Individuals: Behavior Variations 3 Cooking with Computers: Surreptitious Balance Sheets 4 Emotional Security: A New Algorithm 5 Fifty Years in Buckingham Palace Kitchens
Now say your table does not have an identify column, you don’t want to use a temporary table or alter your existing table, but you still would like to have a record number associated with each record. In this case you could use a self join to return a record number for each row. Here is an example that calculates a RecNum column, and displays the LastName for each record in the Northwind.dbo.Employees table. This example uses count(*) to count the number of records that are greater than or equal LastName in this self join.
SELECT count
(*) RecNum, a.LastName FROM Northwind.dbo.Employees a join Northwind.dbo.Employees b on a.LastName >= b.LastName group by a.LastName order by a.LastName
This method works well for a small number of records, a few hundred or less. Since the number of records counts produced by a self join can grows quite big when large sets are involved, causing the performance of this technique to have a slow response times for large set. This method also does not work if there are duplicate values in the columns used in the self join. If there are duplicates then the RecNum column will contain missing values.
A cursor can be used to associate a sequential number with records. To use this method you would allocate a cursor, then process through each cursor record one at a time associating a record number with each record. Here is an example that does just that. This example displays the authors last and first name with a calculated recnum value for each author in the pubs.dbo.authors table where the authors last name is less than ‘G’. Each author is displayed in order by last name and first name with the first author alphabetically being assigned a recnum of 1, and for each successive author the recnum is incremented by one.
declare
@i int declare @name varchar(200) declare authors_cursor cursor for select rtrim(au_lname) + ', ' + rtrim(au_fname) from pubs.dbo.authors where au_lname < 'G' order by au_lname, au_fname open authors_cursor fetch next from authors_cursor into @name set @i = 0 print 'recnum name' print '------ -------------------------------' while @@fetch_status = 0 begin set @i = @i + 1 print cast(@i as char(7)) + rtrim(@name) fetch next from authors_cursor into @name end close authors_cursor deallocate authors_cursor
Output from the cursor query looks like this:
RecNum Name
------ ------------------------------- 1 Bennet, Abraham 2 Blotchet-Halls, Reginald 3 Carson, Cheryl 4 DeFrance, Michel 5 del Castillo, Innes 6 Dull, Ann
Another case I have run across for sequentially number records is numbering groups of records. Where each group starts numbering from 1 to N (N being the number of records in the group), and then starts over again from 1, when the next group is encountered.
For an example of what I am talking about, let’s say you have a set of order detail records for different orders, where you want to associate a line number with each order detailed record. The line number will range from 1 to N, where N is the number of order detail records per order. The following code produces line numbers for orders in the Northwind Order Detail table.
select OD
.OrderID, LineNumber, OD.ProductID, UnitPrice, Quantity, Discount from Northwind.dbo.[Order Details] OD join (select count(*) LineNumber, a.OrderID, a.ProductID from Northwind.dbo.[Order Details] A join Northwind.dbo.[Order Details] B on A.ProductID >= B.ProductID and A.OrderID = B.OrderID group by A.OrderID, A.ProductID) N on OD.OrderID= N.OrderID and OD.ProductID = N.ProductID where OD.OrderID < 10251 order by OD.OrderID, OD.ProductID
This code is similar to the prior self join example, except this code calculates the LineNumber as part of a subquery. This way the LineNumber calculated in the subquery can be joined with the complete Order Detail record.
Conclusion These examples represent a number of different approaches at sequentially numbering a set for records. None of these methods are perfect. But hopefully these methods will give you some ideas on how you might be able to tackle your sequential record numbering issues.
MS SQL Server 
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Code Snippets: Counting Records
