Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Identity


Most of the time IDENTITY property in tables is being used when we do not have specific candidate for our primary key. After this some problems could rise and one of them is "What If I want to rearrange my field, how I am going to do that?"
There could be three different approach take care of this issue:
  1. Create a new table and transfer the table to new table. Next, rename the old table to another name. Finally, rename the new table to the old table's original name.
  2. Alter the table and drop existing IDENTITY column. Next, add a new column as IDENTITY.
  3. Update the current IDENTITY column with appropriate values.
Thus, I am not going to discuss on how to do the first two choices and will try to brainstorm my idea on the third choice.
First, I will create a table with two columns which one of them would be IDENTITY column.
Create Table testIdentity
(
    IdentityID Int Not Null Identity(1, 1)
    ,IdentityDescription Varchar(10)
)


Next, I will try to INSERT some records into the table.
Insert
Into dbo.testIdentity (IdentityDescription)
Values ('ABC')
,('A')
,('AB')
,('ABCD')
,('ABCDE')
,('ABCDEF')
,('ABCDEFG')
,('ABCDEFGH')
,('ABCDEFGHI')


And check the records that have been inserted.
Select * From dbo.testIdentity --9 records has been added


In the next step I will try to DELETE some records from my table.
    Delete From dbo.testIdentity Where IdentityID In (3, 6)
-- two sample records has been deleted



My process will start from here. So far, everything was very simple and fine.
I will transfer all my data in the table to a local table variable and DELETE all data from table, INSERT them back again with correct sequence number.
Set Identity_Insert dbo.testIdentity On

Go
This will let to INSERT new values in the table with our desired ID.
In the next step,
Declare @myTempTable Table (RowNo Int, IdentityDescription Varchar(10))
-- Create a local variable table to transfer data
Insert Into @myTempTable
Select Row_Number() Over (Order by IdentityID) As RowNo, IdentityDescription From dbo.testIdentity

Delete From dbo.testIdentity --Delete all records from main table


So, I transfer all my data to local variable table and delete all of them from main table.
Insert Into dbo.testIdentity (IdentityId, IdentityDescription) --Insert from local table to main table
Select * From @myTempTable


I inserted all my data back into original table. So, next step would be to RESET the IDENTITY to the MAX of values.
Declare @RecordCount Int
Select @RecordCount = Max(RowNo) From @myTempTable
DBCC CheckIdent('dbo.testIdentity', Reseed, @RecordCount);


And turn off "Identity_Insert".
Set Identity_Insert dbo.testIdentity Off
Finally, for the test will try to INSERT and new record and see what would be my new ID.
Insert Into dbo.testIdentity (IdentityDescription) Values ('AB')


testIdentity

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