Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed
by Ray Rankins, Paul T. Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein
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 ...
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