[sql-server] How to generate auto increment field in select query

In the case you have no natural partition value and just want an ordered number regardless of the partition you can just do a row_number over a constant, in the following example i've just used 'X'. Hope this helps someone

select 
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY num ORDER BY col1) as aliascol1, 
    period_next_id, period_name_long
from 
(
  select distinct col1, period_name_long, 'X' as num
  from {TABLE} 
) as x