Ranking Functions (Transact-SQL)

Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance Azure Synapse Analytics Analytics Platform System (PDW) SQL analytics endpoint in Microsoft Fabric Warehouse in Microsoft Fabric

Ranking functions return a ranking value for each row in a partition. Depending on the function that is used, some rows might receive the same value as other rows. Ranking functions are nondeterministic.

Transact-SQL provides the following ranking functions:

Examples

The following example shows the four ranking functions used in the same query. For function-specific examples, see each ranking function.

USE AdventureWorks2022;  
GO  
SELECT p.FirstName, p.LastName  
    ,ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY a.PostalCode) AS "Row Number"  
    ,RANK() OVER (ORDER BY a.PostalCode) AS Rank  
    ,DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY a.PostalCode) AS "Dense Rank"  
    ,NTILE(4) OVER (ORDER BY a.PostalCode) AS Quartile  
    ,s.SalesYTD  
    ,a.PostalCode  
FROM Sales.SalesPerson AS s   
    INNER JOIN Person.Person AS p   
        ON s.BusinessEntityID = p.BusinessEntityID  
    INNER JOIN Person.Address AS a   
        ON a.AddressID = p.BusinessEntityID  
WHERE TerritoryID IS NOT NULL AND SalesYTD <> 0;  

Here is the result set.

FirstName LastName Row Number Rank Dense Rank Quartile SalesYTD PostalCode
Michael Blythe 1 1 1 1 4557045.0459 98027
Linda Mitchell 2 1 1 1 5200475.2313 98027
Jillian Carson 3 1 1 1 3857163.6332 98027
Garrett Vargas 4 1 1 1 1764938.9859 98027
Tsvi Reiter 5 1 1 2 2811012.7151 98027
Shu Ito 6 6 2 2 3018725.4858 98055
José Saraiva 7 6 2 2 3189356.2465 98055
David Campbell 8 6 2 3 3587378.4257 98055
Tete Mensa-Annan 9 6 2 3 1931620.1835 98055
Lynn Tsoflias 10 6 2 3 1758385.926 98055
Rachel Valdez 11 6 2 4 2241204.0424 98055
Jae Pak 12 6 2 4 5015682.3752 98055
Ranjit Varkey Chudukatil 13 6 2 4 3827950.238 98055

See Also

Built-in Functions (Transact-SQL)
OVER Clause (Transact-SQL)