Question

I have a db table containing a column display_order. The data looks like this:

2 
4 
7 
10 
12

I want to update the same db column and it should look like this:

1
2
3
4
5

Please suggest some easy SQL code.

Answer 1

Have a look into ROW_NUMBER(), this will help you here.

e.g. demo that won’t update your data, but will show you the current order and the new order based on ROW_NUMBER

SELECT display_order AS CurrentDisplayOrder, 
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY display_order) AS NewDisplayOrder
FROM YourTable
ORDER BY display_order

If that produces what you’d expect, then you can just switch it into an UPDATE statement.