Identity field max size

What is the highest value that an identity field in a table can reach? is
there a limit to the size of the interger? or is it something like a 64bit
integer field used... If it's just a standard integer field, limiting it to
32,000 numbers it could use would be bad for my app..anything like this to
worry about when using an identity column for a primary key? thanks!The max value is dependent on the datatype you select (the span of values
for all datatypes are documented in Books Online, TSQL reference,
Datatypes).
--
Tibor Karaszi, SQL Server MVP
Archive at:
http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&as_ugroup=microsoft.public.sqlserver
"Brian Henry" <Fakeaddress@.reschini.com> wrote in message
news:%236EBytP7DHA.1504@.TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> What is the highest value that an identity field in a table can reach? is
> there a limit to the size of the interger? or is it something like a 64bit
> integer field used... If it's just a standard integer field, limiting it
to
> 32,000 numbers it could use would be bad for my app..anything like this to
> worry about when using an identity column for a primary key? thanks!
>|||In article <elqJ82P7DHA.3804@.tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl>,
tibor_please.no.email_karaszi@.hotmail.nomail.com said...
> The max value is dependent on the datatype you select (the span of values
> for all datatypes are documented in Books Online, TSQL reference,
> Datatypes).
And if you have it as an int you can always roll it over to -2.1 billion
when you hit the max as long as your app doesn't use the identity for <>
operations. You can also switch it to bigint at that point and never
worry about filling it up, but that DDL operation would probably take a
while to update the table.