Question

Got a table with 1200 rows. Added a new column which will contain incremental values –
Candidate1
Candidate2
Candidate3
.
.
.
Candidate1200

What is the best way to insert these values , non manual way. I am using SQL Server 2008

Answer 1

Assuming there’s an IDENTITY column (I called it id for this example):

UPDATE YOUR_TABLE
  SET new_column = (SELECT 'Candidate'+ CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY yt.id) AS VARCHAR(4))
                      FROM YOUR_TABLE yt
                     WHERE yt.id = YOUR_TABLE.id)