The SEQUENCE Object
Historically, one notable difference between SQL Server and other database platforms (such as Oracle and DB2) has been the manner in which you implement automatically assigned integer values for primary keys when inserting new rows. SQL Server provides the IDENTITY attribute for the int and bigint data types, whereas other platforms require you to create an independent “sequence generator” object that feeds incrementing values to new rows in the table. These are two different ways to achieve the same thing, and SQL Server’s IDENTITY is arguably simpler to use, but sequence generators offer their own unique advantages as well.
SQL Server 2012 now also supports sequence generators as a powerful alternative to using the IDENTITY ...
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