SQL RANK() versus ROW_NUMBER()

ROW_NUMBER : Returns a unique number for each row starting with 1. For rows that have duplicate values,numbers are arbitarily assigned.

Rank : Assigns a unique number for each row starting with 1,except for rows that have duplicate values,in which case the same ranking is assigned and a gap appears in the sequence for each duplicate ranking.

This article covers an interesting relationship between ROW_NUMBER() and DENSE_RANK() (the RANK() function is not treated specifically). When you need a generated ROW_NUMBER() on a SELECT DISTINCT statement, the ROW_NUMBER() will produce distinct values before they are removed by the DISTINCT keyword. E.g. this query

SELECT DISTINCT
  v, 
  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY v) row_number
FROM t
ORDER BY v, row_number

... might produce this result (DISTINCT has no effect):

+---+------------+
| V | ROW_NUMBER |
+---+------------+
| a |          1 |
| a |          2 |
| a |          3 |
| b |          4 |
| c |          5 |
| c |          6 |
| d |          7 |
| e |          8 |
+---+------------+

Whereas this query:

SELECT DISTINCT
  v, 
  DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY v) row_number
FROM t
ORDER BY v, row_number

... produces what you probably want in this case:

+---+------------+
| V | ROW_NUMBER |
+---+------------+
| a |          1 |
| b |          2 |
| c |          3 |
| d |          4 |
| e |          5 |
+---+------------+

Note that the ORDER BY clause of the DENSE_RANK() function will need all other columns from the SELECT DISTINCT clause to work properly.

The reason for this is that logically, window functions are calculated before DISTINCT is applied.

All three functions in comparison

Using PostgreSQL / Sybase / SQL standard syntax (WINDOW clause):

SELECT
  v,
  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (window) row_number,
  RANK()       OVER (window) rank,
  DENSE_RANK() OVER (window) dense_rank
FROM t
WINDOW window AS (ORDER BY v)
ORDER BY v

... you'll get:

+---+------------+------+------------+
| V | ROW_NUMBER | RANK | DENSE_RANK |
+---+------------+------+------------+
| a |          1 |    1 |          1 |
| a |          2 |    1 |          1 |
| a |          3 |    1 |          1 |
| b |          4 |    4 |          2 |
| c |          5 |    5 |          3 |
| c |          6 |    5 |          3 |
| d |          7 |    7 |          4 |
| e |          8 |    8 |          5 |
+---+------------+------+------------+

You will only see the difference if you have ties within a partition for a particular ordering value.

RANK and DENSE_RANK are deterministic in this case, all rows with the same value for both the ordering and partitioning columns will end up with an equal result, whereas ROW_NUMBER will arbitrarily (non deterministically) assign an incrementing result to the tied rows.

Example: (All rows have the same StyleID so are in the same partition and within that partition the first 3 rows are tied when ordered by ID)

WITH T(StyleID, ID)
     AS (SELECT 1,1 UNION ALL
         SELECT 1,1 UNION ALL
         SELECT 1,1 UNION ALL
         SELECT 1,2)
SELECT *,
       RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY StyleID ORDER BY ID)       AS [RANK],
       ROW_NUMBER() OVER(PARTITION BY StyleID ORDER BY ID) AS [ROW_NUMBER],
       DENSE_RANK() OVER(PARTITION BY StyleID ORDER BY ID) AS [DENSE_RANK]
FROM   T  

Returns

StyleID     ID       RANK      ROW_NUMBER      DENSE_RANK
----------- -------- --------- --------------- ----------
1           1        1         1               1
1           1        1         2               1
1           1        1         3               1
1           2        4         4               2

You can see that for the three identical rows the ROW_NUMBER increments, the RANK value remains the same then it leaps to 4. DENSE_RANK also assigns the same rank to all three rows but then the next distinct value is assigned a value of 2.