title: What is the purpose of system table master..spt_values and what are the meanings of its values?
body: <p>What is the purpose of system table master..spt_values?<br />
  Why was it provided and how one should use it?</p>
  <p>What are the meanings of its type, low, high values?</p>
  <p>Update:<br />
  Google search gives thousands of &quot; its uses&quot;, for example:</p>
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4273978/why-and-how-to-split-column-using-master-spt-values">to split column using master..spt_values</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=102936" rel="nofollow noreferrer">it contains numbers from 0 to 2047. It is very useful.for example if you need to populate a table with 100 numbers from this range</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://dbaspot.com/forums/sqlserver-server/237039-spt_values.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">for building indexes</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Development/MS-SQL-Server/A_1221-Fun-with-MS-SQL-spt-values-for-delimited-strings-and-virtual-calendars.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">creating virtual calendars</a></li>
  <li>getting descriptions of used objects in somewhat non-intuitive and complicated way<br />
  <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210805021856/http://www.devx.com/vb2themax/Tip/18617" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Enumerate all the indexes in a SQL Server database (Giuseppe Dimauro, devx.com)</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_sql_server_2005_windows_script_display_disk_space_usage.htm" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;SQL Server 2005 script to display disk space usage&quot;</a></li>
  <li><a href="http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic193376-19-1.aspx#bm193423" rel="nofollow noreferrer">&quot;It's not worth talking about. This table is a design nightmare of a &quot;super&quot; lookup table&quot;</a></li>
  </ul>
  <p>Some posts warn against its use since it can be removed in future versions of SQL Server but there are already code scripts using it to illustrate new features of new SQL Server 11 (Denali):</p>
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20161205233312/http://blogs.lessthandot.com/index.php/DataMgmt/DBProgramming/MSSQLServer/using-offset-n-rows-fetch-next-n-rows-on/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Using OFFSET N ROWS FETCH NEXT N ROWS ONLY In SQL Server Denali for easy paging</a></li>
  </ul>