Chad Callihan looks at the fourth ranking window function:
Have you ever used the NTILE function? Or have you even heard of the NTILE function? It seems to be one of the lesser known, lesser used window functions in SQL Server. I’ve never come across it in the wild but maybe there are those that use it all the time. Either way, let’s have a look at what it does and how it can be used.
Click through for a demo. I definitely use it a lot less than ROW_NUMBER(), RANK(), and DENSE_RANK(), but I have used it to some good effect in the past, mostly in cases where I’ve wanted to focus on the top X% of data for an analysis.