Reset Identity Column in SQL
Bradley Schacht is a Principal Program Manager on the Microsoft Fabric product team based in Saint Augustine, FL. Bradley is a former consultant, trainer, and has coauthored 6 SQL Server and Power BI books, most recently Learn Microsoft Fabric. As a member of the Microsoft Fabric product team, Bradley works directly with customers to solve some of their most complex data problems and helps shape the future of Microsoft Fabric. Bradley gives back to the community through speaking at events such as the SQLBits, Fabric Community Conference, PASS Community Data Summit, SQL Saturdays, Code Camps, and user groups across the country including locally at the Jacksonville SQL Server User Group (JSSUG). He is a contributor on SQLServerCentral.com and blogs on his personal site, BradleySchacht.com.
I'll be honest, I am partially writing this because I always forget how to reset the identity column on a table and I want to be able to just pull up my blog and look it up. Yet again today I had to do this and I couldn't remember the exact syntax, so here it is. The next record is going to be the seed value plus 1, or in the case of this example I will use zero so the first record is 1. That will make my O.C.D. happy to see my table starting with a key value of 1! Hopefully this will help some people new to T-SQL and be a simple reminder for the veterans out there. Syntax: DBCC CHECKIDENT('TableNameHere', RESEED, StartingValue - 1) Example: DBCC CHECKIDENT('DimGeography', RESEED, 0)