Question

Given:

You can sort result set by indicating index of column.

SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS ORDERY BY 1

I’m trying to use in the following context, however, I get error message:

Msg 5308, Level 16, State 1, Line 8
Windowed functions do not support integer indices as ORDER BY clause expressions.

EXEC ("
SELECT  *, 
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY 1 ) AS 'Seq'   
from dynamic_table");

Can you think of a work-around?

Answer 1

If you know the column name this should work:

Exec ("
select *, 
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY " + columnName + " ) AS 'Seq'   
from dynamic_table");

If the column name is not known:

DECLARE @table_name nvarchar(100) = 'test'
DECLARE @column_name nvarchar(100) 
SELECT 
    @column_name = columns.name
FROM sys.columns
inner join sys.tables ON tables.object_id = columns.object_id
WHERE tables.name = @table_name and column_id = 1

EXEC ('
select *, 
ROW_NUMBER() OVER ( ORDER BY ' + @column_name + ' ) AS ''Seq''   
from ' + @table_name);