Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Ranking Functions

SQL Server 2012 supports four ranking functions: ROW_NUMBER, RANK, DENSE_RANK, and NTILE. These functions allow you to analyze data and provide ranking values to result rows of a query. For example, you might use these ranking functions for assigning sequential integer row IDs to result rows or for presentation, paging, or scoring purposes.

All four ranking functions follow a similar syntax pattern:

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function_name() OVER(  [PARTITION BY partition_by_list]  ORDER BY order_by_list)

The ROW_NUMBER Function

The ROW_NUMBER function allows you to provide sequential integer values to the result rows of a query, based on the order of the rows in the result. The result set must be ordered using an OVER