MS SQL RowID equivalent

Hello everyone,

Many MS SQL developers ask if there is an equivalent to RowID from ORACLE in MS SQL.

The answers is NO.

But there is a workaround. You can use ROW_NUMBER() instead and where you will need to specify based on which columns to generate RowID, the order in which the ROW_NUMBER value is assigned to the rows in a partition.

Here is an example:

SELECT FirstName, LastName, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY SalesYTD DESC) AS 'Row Number', SalesYTD, PostalCode
FROM Sales.vSalesPerson

You can see more details on Microsoft's page about ROW_NUMBER() function: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186734.aspx

Simple, isn't it?