renumber primary key

Question

How would I reset the primary key counter on a sql table and update each row with a new primary key?

Answer 1

you could do it in the following steps:

• create copy of yourTable with extra column new_key
• populate copyOfYourTable with the affected rows from yourTable along with desired values of new_key
• temporarily disable constraints
• update all related tables to point to the value of new_key instead of the old_key
• delete affected rows from yourTable
• SET IDENTITY_INSERT [yourTable] ON
• insert affected rows again with the new proper value of the key (from copy table)
• SET IDENTITY_INSERT [yourTable] OFF
• reseed identity
• re-enable constraints
• delete the copyOfYourtable

But as others said all that work is not needed. I tend to look at the identity type primary keys as if they were equivalent of pointers in C, I use them to reference other objects but never modify of access them explicitly