what is the use of IDENTITY data type?

• shad.saleem41

  Mr or Mrs. 500

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  July 25, 2013 at 1:05 am

  #395196

  CREATE TABLE Production.Categories(

  categoryid INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,

  categoryname NVARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,

  description NVARCHAR(200) NOT NULL DEFAULT ('')

  )

  This is my create table statement in this [categoryid INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL] what is the use of IDENTITY data type

• Koen Verbeeck

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  July 25, 2013 at 1:27 am

  #1635602

  Identity is not the data type, INT is.

  The identity property specifies that this column is autopopulated by an integer, starting at 1 and adding 1 for each new row.

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• Eugene Elutin

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  July 25, 2013 at 4:05 am

  #1635654

  Koen Verbeeck (7/25/2013)

  ---

  Identity is not the data type, INT is.

  The identity property specifies that this column is autopopulated by an integer, starting at 1 and adding 1 for each new row.

  Just to make it clear: columns can be set an Identity if it's constrained to be nonnullable and it is one of the following datatypes:

  int, bigint, smallint, tinyint, decimal or numeric with scale of 0

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