Question

Suppose I have a table Item (Id int Primary Key, Number INT) having records

Id    Number
100     3
200     3

Now I am running a query

SELECT I.Id,ROW_NUMBER()OVER(ORDER BY I.Number) RN
FROM Item I

in my machine result set is

Id   RN
100   1
200   2

Now my question is does this result set will be on all machine, OR in some machine it may change as

Id   RN
200   1
100   2

Any help is welcome

Answer 1

As well as the undefined order of results mentioned by Panagiotis

The result of ROW_NUMBER is undeterministic in the event of ties. You would need to add a tie breaker of a unique column to the ORDER BY so that the two rows with Number=3 have a deterministic numbering applied.

Assuming Id is unique the following would be deterministic

SELECT I.Id,ROW_NUMBER()OVER(ORDER BY I.Number,I.Id) RN
FROM Item I
ORDER BY RN