It's good to hear you are keeping busy anyway 🙂
Though the management side of things sounds quite dull.
Florian Reischl (9/7/2009)
Paul White (9/7/2009)
But for a table which just needs sequential row numbers adding to it, even 2008 doesn't have a faster method.It depends. In SQL Server 2005/2008 you can avoid the usage of a temporary table and directly create an incremental ID by bulk selecting data from source tables (if available).
I think you're referring to windowing functions like ROW_NUMBER...is that right? I'd like to be sure I understand you correctly.
That sure can be an efficient way to add a sequence number 'on the fly' - but I stand by my claim that the script I posted remains the fastest way to add persistent sequential numbering to a large table (Jeff's caveats noted).
Hope you are well.
Paul
Paul White
SQLPerformance.com
SQLkiwi blog
@SQL_Kiwi