Interesting.

You could also do something like this:

WITH CTE AS

(

SELECT

1 AS number

UNION ALL

SELECT

X.number + 1 AS number

FROM

CTE X

WHERE

X.number + 1 <= 100

)

SELECT

REPLICATE ('|', X.number) + REPLICATE ('.', 100 - X.number) AS progress_bar

,CONVERT (VARCHAR (11), X.number) + '%' AS progress_pct

FROM

CTE X