cengland0 (1/6/2011)
When the question asked will it always return consecutive integers, I knew right away that it was false because none of them will always return consecutive integers if there is only one row.
Meh, I could just as well say that everything is consecutive in a single-row rowset.
According to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/consecutive, "consecutive" means (a.o.) "Following one after another without interruption" - and in a single row row-set, there can never be any interruption.
The reason that RANK does not return consecutive values is how ties are handled - for instance, if the RANK is based on the scores {9.6, 8.4, 9.6}, the results would be
Score Rank
9.6 1
9.6 1
8.4 3
Because two rows get the rank 1, the value 2 is skipped. That makes the values non-consecutive.