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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-15T08:28:34+00:00

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name; My algorithm is: check count count+1 is the new primary

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SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table_name;

My algorithm is:

  • check count
  • count+1 is the new primary key starting point
  • Then keep on incrementing before every insert operation

But what is this GUID? Does SQL Server provide something where it automatically generates and incremented primary key?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I’m not sure if you’re also asking about IDENTITY or not- but a GUID is a unique identifier that is (almost) guaranteed to be unique. It can be used on primary keys but isn’t recommended unless you’re doing offline work or planning on merging databases.

    For example a “normal”, IDENTITY primary key is

    1   Jason
2   Jake
3   Mike

    which when merging with another database which looks like

    1   Lisa
2   John
3   Sam

    will be tricky. You’ve got to re-key some columns, make sure that your FKs are in order, etc. Using GUIDs, the data looks like this, and is easy to merge:

    1FB74D3F-2C84-43A6-9FB6-0EFC7092F4CE    Jason
845D5184-6383-473F-A5D6-4DE98DBFBC39    Jake
8F515331-4457-49D0-A9F5-5814EE7F50BA    Mike    
CE789C89-E01F-4BCE-AC05-CBDF10419E78    Lisa
4D51B568-107C-4B63-9F7F-24592704118F    John
7FA4ED64-7356-4013-A78A-C8CCAB329954    Sam

    Note that a GUID takes a lot more space than an INT, and because of this it’s recommended to use an INT as a primary key unless you absolutely need to.

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