What is the best way to create and populate a numbers table?

Question

I\'ve seen many different ways to create and populate a numbers table. However, what is the best way to create and populate one? With \"best\" being defined from most to l

Answer 1

Some of the suggested methods are basing on system objects (for example on the 'sys.objects'). They are assuming these system objects contain enough records to generate our numbers.

I would not base on anything which does not belong to my application and over which I do not have full control. For example: the content of these sys tables may change, the tables may not be valid anymore in new version of SQL etc.

As a solution, we can create our own table with records. We then use that one instead these system related objects (table with all numbers should be fine if we know the range in advance otherwise we could go for the one to do the cross join on).

The CTE based solution is working fine but it has limits related to the nested loops.