AUTO_INCREMENT in SQL Server

The AUTO_INCREAMENT functionality in SQL is used to automatically increase a value for a particular column in the given row. It inserts the next value which is inserted in the last row. This is generally used to manage the serial numbers of the entries in the table or to assign an ID to each row.

It makes the column ideal for the primary key or situations where we need unique identifiers. In this article, we will see how to assign a column as AUTO_INCREAMENT.

Syntax to create an auto-increment column:

CREATE TABLE TableName (
    ColumnName INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    -- Other columns
);

Here ColumnName will be the name of that particular column and the PRIMARY KEY defines that the given column is the primary key of the table. The keyword AUTOINCREMENT will declare the column as incrementing automatically. We will perform the following steps to implement this.

• Declare the table structure.
• In structure declare a column as Primary Key and Auto Increment.
• Insert the data into the table.
• Print the table.

Structured Query Language also known as SQL is a tool for storing, managing, and manipulating relational databases. SQL Server is a popular relational database management system (RDBMS) developed by Microsoft, providing a variety of operators to perform different operations on given datasets.

In this we will explore SQL’s AUTO_INCREMENT, exemplifying its usage in tables like Employees, Products, and Customers, ensuring unique identifiers for each record.