TSQL 2012 – Generating letters with a SEQUENCE object

As shown in my previous posting on SEQUENCES, they are a user-defined object that generates a sequence of numeric values in Transact SQL 2012.  But what if you want to generate letters instead of numbers.

Here is a code example of a sequence used to generate letters (indirectly).

-- SEQUENCE
-- generating letters with a sequence.
--DROP SEQUENCE lettersSequence;
CREATE SEQUENCE lettersSequence
 AS tinyint
MINVALUE 65
 MAXVALUE 90
 CYCLE
 INCREMENT BY 1 ;

SELECT char(NEXT VALUE FOR lettersSequence) ;
SELECT char(NEXT VALUE FOR lettersSequence) ;
SELECT char(NEXT VALUE FOR lettersSequence) ;
SELECT char(NEXT VALUE FOR lettersSequence) ;
SELECT char(NEXT VALUE FOR lettersSequence) ;

Which generates the following output.

Just another cool trick with new features in sql server 2012.

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