Adding a unique row count to a SQL 2008 "for xml path" statement?

Answer 1

You could alias @@rowcount to '@id', like:

declare @t table (name varchar(25))

insert @t (name) values ('jddjdjd')

select  @@rowcount as '@id'
,       name
from    @t
for xml path('row'), root('rows')

This prints:

<rows>
    <row id="1">
        <name>jddjdjd</name>
    </row>
</rows>

However, I'm not sure it's clearly defined what @@rowcount means at the point where it gets turned into an attribute.