SQL, Auxiliary table of numbers

Question

For certain types of sql queries, an auxiliary table of numbers can be very useful. It may be created as a table with as many rows as you need for a particular task or as a

Answer 1

This article gives 14 different possible solutions with discussion of each. The important point is that:

suggestions regarding efficiency and performance are often subjective. Regardless of how a query is being used, the physical implementation determines the efficiency of a query. Therefore, rather than relying on biased guidelines, it is imperative that you test the query and determine which one performs better.

I personally liked:

WITH Nbrs ( n ) AS (
    SELECT 1 UNION ALL
    SELECT 1 + n FROM Nbrs WHERE n < 500 )
SELECT n FROM Nbrs
OPTION ( MAXRECURSION 500 )