Row numbers for a query in informix

Question

I am using informix database, I want a query which you could also generate a row number along with the query

Like

select row_number(),firstName,lastN         


        

Answer 1

You may not be able to use ROWID in a table that's fragmented across multiple DBSpaces, so any solution that uses ROWID is not particularly portable. It's also strongly discouraged.

If you don't have a SERIAL column in your source table (which is a better way of implementing this as a general concept), have a look at CREATE SEQUENCE, which is more or less the equivalent of an Orrible function that generates unique numbers when SELECTed from (as opposed to SERIAL, which generates the unique number when the row is INSERTed).