Auto increment primary key in SQL Server Management Studio 2012

Question

How do I auto increment the primary key in a SQL Server database table, I\'ve had a look through the forum but can\'t see how.

Answer 1

CREATE TABLE Persons (
    Personid int IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY,
    LastName varchar(255) NOT NULL,
    FirstName varchar(255),
    Age int
);

The MS SQL Server uses the IDENTITY keyword to perform an auto-increment feature.

In the example above, the starting value for IDENTITY is 1, and it will increment by 1 for each new record.

Tip: To specify that the "Personid" column should start at value 10 and increment by 5, change it to IDENTITY(10,5).

To insert a new record into the "Persons" table, we will NOT have to specify a value for the "Personid" column (a unique value will be added automatically):