Part 85: Introduction to Recursive CTEs: Anchor & Recursive Members

A Recursive CTE references itself, allowing you to traverse trees, graphs, and hierarchical relationships.

1. Anatomy of a Recursive CTE

WITH RECURSIVE NumberSeries AS (
  -- 1. Anchor Member (Base Case):
  SELECT 1 AS n

  UNION ALL

  -- 2. Recursive Member (Recursive Step):
  SELECT n + 1 
  FROM NumberSeries 
  WHERE n < 10 -- Termination Condition
)
SELECT n FROM NumberSeries;

Key Takeaways

• An Anchor query initializes the recursion.
• A Recursive query operates on the previous iteration's result until termination.

In Part 86, we will traverse Organizational Hierarchies with Recursive CTEs!