Only this week, get the SQL Complete Track of 9 courses in a special prize of $330$89!
Introduction
The very basics
Infinite looping
Processing trees with recursive CTEs
Processing graphs with recursive ctes
Summary

Instruction

In the world of computer science, recursion takes place when we invoke a block of instructions inside itself.

In T-SQL, when we talk about a recursive CTE, we're talking about a CTE that refers to itself. The idea behind recursive CTEs is usually as follows: 'Hey, give me everything you have so far, but add something extra as well. Then, repeat this procedure until I tell you to stop. By adding small pieces in each recursive step, I expect to finally arrive at the right result.'

Sounds vague? Let's introduce our first example.

Exercise

Let's say we want to show the numbers from 1 to 10, but we don't have a table with rows containing those numbers.

Luckily, we can use recursion. Take a look at the template, run it and see the result. Don't pay too much attention to the details – we'll explain everything in a second.