Got a table with 1200 rows. Added a new column which will contain incremental values - Candidate1 Candidate2 Candidate3 . . . Candidate1200
What is the best way to insert these values , non manual way. I am using SQL Server 2008
Assuming there's an IDENTITY column (I called it id for this example):
UPDATE YOUR_TABLE SET new_column = (SELECT 'Candidate'+ CAST(ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY yt.id) AS VARCHAR(4)) FROM YOUR_TABLE yt WHERE yt.id = YOUR_TABLE.id) You might be able to use ROW_NUMBER
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186734.aspx
Perhaps perform a query that gets the row number and use that query to perform an update on the source table where you concatenate the Row Number with 'Candidate'.