Is there a generic way to generate an arbitrary linear sequence in SQL?

Question

Is there a SQL query I can do that will generate a linear sequence like

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 ... x+1

or

2, 7, 12, 17, 22 ...         


        

Answer 1

SQL Server and Oracle now implement the ANSI standard ROW_NUMBER() windowing function, but you'd need a table to work off of:

SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY ID) AS __ROW, ID, Name
FROM SomethingWithANameAndAnID
ORDER BY __ROW;

Or you could use a recursive Common Table Expression in SQL Server (not sure if Oracle implements this yet):

WITH cte AS
(
    SELECT 1 AS num
    UNION ALL
    SELECT (num + 1) AS num FROM cte
    WHERE num < @SomeMaximum
)
SELECT * FROM cte OPTION (MAXRECURSION 0);

Note that without the MAXRECURSION option CTE recursion depth in MS SQL is limited to 100. (value of 0 disables the recursion limit)