Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

The SEQUENCE Object

A SEQUENCE is a user-defined schema-bound object that generates a sequence of numeric values. Historically in SQL Server, automatically generated sequence numbers were obtained by adding an IDENTITY column to a table. The SEQUENCE object, introduced in SQL Server 2012, provides another mechanism for generating unique, sequential numbers. A SEQUENCE object, unlike an IDENTITY column, is not associated with a specific table. A sequence object can be referenced independently, and the sequence values generated can be coordinated across multiple rows and tables.

A SEQUENCE object is created using the CREATE SEQUENCE statement. When you define a SEQUENCE object, you can specify options such as the following:

The increment value ...