Now that I'm officially unemployed, I finally got around to downloading SQL 2016 developer edition to play around with.  Right now, the two most frustrating things are that they changed...

This should be done in the presentation layer, not the database layer.  SQL Server is highly typed, which means that all of the values in a column have to have...

Please don't create multiple threads for the same issue.

Please respond here

; WITH a AS
(
    SELECT id, tablebid, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY id) AS rn
    FROM TableA
)
, b AS
(
    SELECT tablebid, ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY tablebid) AS...

This gives the exact same results.  Why doesn't DENSE_RANK work?

; WITH [a] AS
(
SELECT 9990 [col1] UNION ALL
SELECT 9990 UNION ALL

I see nothing here that requires a cursor.  You aren't even using the variables.  Simply get rid of the cursor.

Drew

Use DENSE_RANK instead of ROW_NUMBER.  From the data given, you do not want a partition.

Drew

1) WHY?!?!?! They're horribly inefficient.
2) How to create a CURSOR You haven't given enough information, but this link will give you the basics.
3) WHY?!?!?! They're horribly inefficient.