SQL Server 2008 Express Edition - how to create a sequence

Question

I'm using SQL Server 2008 Express Edition.

I wanna create a sequence with this code:

CREATE SEQUENCE Postoffice_seq
    AS bigint
    START WITH 1
    INCREMENT BY 1
    MINVALUE 0
    NO MAXVALUE;

and the error is

Msg 343, Level 15, State 1, Line 1
Unknown object type 'SEQUENCE' used in a CREATE, DROP, or ALTER statement.

Can anyone help me?

Best Regards!

Answer 1

SQL Server 2008 doesn't know sequences yet - that'll be introduced in SQL Server 2012 (f.k.a. "Denali").

For pretty much the same result, use an INT IDENTITY column instead:

CREATE TABLE dbo.YourTable
  (YourID INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY,
    ....
  )

The IDENTITY column is automatically filled by SQL Server at the time you insert a new row into the table. SQL Server makes sure it's monotonically increasing, starting at 1, increasing by 1 (you can set these to different values, if needed).

Basically, when inserting a row into such a table, you must not specify the IDENTITY column in your list of columns to insert values into - SQL Server will do this for you automatically.