Deceptively simple ... and potentially evil

drop table tNUM CREATE TABLE dbo.tNUM ( NUM INT PRIMARY KEY ); WITH L0 AS (SELECT 1 AS c UNION ALL SELECT 1), -- 2 L1 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L0 AS A CROSS JOIN L0 AS B), -- 4 L2 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L1 AS A CROSS JOIN L1 AS B), -- 16 L3 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L2 AS A CROSS JOIN L2 AS B), -- 256 L4 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L3 AS A CROSS JOIN L3 AS B), -- 65,536 L5 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L4 AS A CROSS JOIN L4 AS B), -- 4,294,967,296 L6 AS (SELECT 1 AS c FROM L5 AS A CROSS JOIN L5 AS B), -- 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 ... ---- Nums AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS n FROM L2) Nums AS (SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY (SELECT NULL)) AS n FROM L5) --L6) INSERT INTO dbo.tNUM ( NUM ) SELECT -- TOP (1000) n FROM Nums --SELECT TOP (1000) -- n --FROM Nums ORDER BY n; SELECT COUNT (*) FROM tNum