A real recursion with CTE?

Question

I just discovered CTE this afternoon and after enjoying them during 2 hours, I realized that they did not perform a common recursion like we all learned in any other languag

Answer 1

You can build a column to sort by when you do the recursion.

Something like this:

declare @t table
(
  ID int,
  ParentID int,
  Name varchar(10)
);

insert into @T values
(1, null, 'team1'),
(2, null, 'team2'),
(3, null, 'team3'),
(4, 1, 'team1-1'),
(5, 1, 'team1-2'),
(6, 3, 'team3-1');

with C as
(
  select T.ID,
         T.ParentID,
         T.Name,
         cast(right(100000 + row_number() over(order by T.ID), 5) as varchar(max)) as Sort
  from @T as T
  where T.ParentID is null
  union all
  select T.ID,
         T.ParentID,
         T.Name,
         C.Sort+right(100000 + row_number() over(order by T.ID), 5)
  from @T as T
    inner join C
      on T.ParentID = C.ID
)
select *
from C
order by Sort

Result:

ID          ParentID    Name       Sort
----------- ----------- ---------- ------------
1           NULL        team1      00001
4           1           team1-1    0000100001
5           1           team1-2    0000100002
2           NULL        team2      00002
3           NULL        team3      00003
6           3           team3-1    0000300001