I recently wrote this built-in table evaluation function to solve this problem. It is not limited to areas other than memory and storage. It does not access tables, so there is no need to read or write discs at all. It adds union values exponentially at each iteration, so it is very fast even for very large ranges. It creates ten million records in five seconds on my server. It also works with negative values.
CREATE FUNCTION [dbo].[fn_ConsecutiveNumbers] ( @start int, @end int ) RETURNS TABLE RETURN select x268435456.X | x16777216.X | x1048576.X | x65536.X | x4096.X | x256.X | x16.X | x1.X + @start X from (VALUES (0),(1),(2),(3),(4),(5),(6),(7),(8),(9),(10),(11),(12),(13),(14),(15)) as x1(X) join (VALUES (0),(16),(32),(48),(64),(80),(96),(112),(128),(144),(160),(176),(192),(208),(224),(240)) as x16(X) on x1.X <= @end-@start and x16.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(256),(512),(768),(1024),(1280),(1536),(1792),(2048),(2304),(2560),(2816),(3072),(3328),(3584),(3840)) as x256(X) on x256.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(4096),(8192),(12288),(16384),(20480),(24576),(28672),(32768),(36864),(40960),(45056),(49152),(53248),(57344),(61440)) as x4096(X) on x4096.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(65536),(131072),(196608),(262144),(327680),(393216),(458752),(524288),(589824),(655360),(720896),(786432),(851968),(917504),(983040)) as x65536(X) on x65536.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(1048576),(2097152),(3145728),(4194304),(5242880),(6291456),(7340032),(8388608),(9437184),(10485760),(11534336),(12582912),(13631488),(14680064),(15728640)) as x1048576(X) on x1048576.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(16777216),(33554432),(50331648),(67108864),(83886080),(100663296),(117440512),(134217728),(150994944),(167772160),(184549376),(201326592),(218103808),(234881024),(251658240)) as x16777216(X) on x16777216.X <= @end-@start join (VALUES (0),(268435456),(536870912),(805306368),(1073741824),(1342177280),(1610612736),(1879048192)) as x268435456(X) on x268435456.X <= @end-@start WHERE @end >= x268435456.X | isnull(x16777216.X, 0) | isnull(x1048576.X, 0) | isnull(x65536.X, 0) | isnull(x4096.X, 0) | isnull(x256.X, 0) | isnull(x16.X, 0) | isnull(x1.X, 0) + @start GO SELECT X FROM fn_ConsecutiveNumbers(5, 500);
It is also suitable for date and time ranges:
SELECT DATEADD(day,X, 0) DayX FROM fn_ConsecutiveNumbers(datediff(day,0,'5/8/2015'), datediff(day,0,'5/31/2015')) SELECT DATEADD(hour,X, 0) HourX FROM fn_ConsecutiveNumbers(datediff(hour,0,'5/8/2015'), datediff(hour,0,'5/8/2015 12:00 PM'));
You can use a cross to join it to split records based on values in a table. For example, to create a record for every minute in a time range in a table, you can do something like:
select TimeRanges.StartTime, TimeRanges.EndTime, DATEADD(minute,X, 0) MinuteX FROM TimeRanges cross apply fn_ConsecutiveNumbers(datediff(hour,0,TimeRanges.StartTime), datediff(hour,0,TimeRanges.EndTime)) ConsecutiveNumbers