SQL Server features to identify rows in a table

You have ROWCOUNT, which is a session-level global variable. You can check this value after an insert, update, delete or select and it will return the number of rows affected by the last statement. As for row numbers you will have to work with SQL Server 2005 to take advantage of this new feature. If you are running SQL Server 2005 and installed the AdventureWorks database, here's an example:

The ROW_NUMBER function returns the ordinal row position of each row in a grouping within a result set. This function...

can be very useful for generating reports.

 select ROW_NUMBER() over(PARTITION BY PC.Name ORDER BY ListPrice) as Row, PC.Name Category, P.Name Product, P.ListPrice From Production.Product P JOIN Production.ProductSubcategory PSC on P.ProductSubCategoryID = PSC.ProductSubCategoryID JOIN Production.ProductCategory PC on PSC.ProductCategoryID = PC.ProductCategoryID