Index autoincrement for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Question

I created a new table in SQL Server 2008 R2, and i would like that the index is on autoincrement. How to do that? There is no identity data type; i selected int

Solution 1

In SQL Server, it's not a separate datatype ("autoincrement") - but you can define an INT column to be an IDENTITY.

How are you creating your table - visual designer or T-SQL script??

In T-SQL, you would use:

CREATE TABLE dbo.MyTable(ID INT IDENTITY(1,1) ......

and in the visual table designer, you need to check:

It's an option for a column of type INT - you can define the seed (starting value) and the increment - typically both are set to 1.

Solution 2

If your table definition is like this,

....,
@id int,
....

change it to,

....
@id int identity(1,1),
....

This will create an identity column which starts id with 1 and keeps increasing it by one(i.e. step) as each record in the table is inserted.

Comments

[ZygD]

Where does @id come into it please?

[Magnetic_dud]

Thanks a lot! I was using MS SQL Management Studio - visual designer