sql server - SQL to return list of years since a specific year

Question

I need a list of years as a recordset starting with 2004 to current year (in desc order), without writing a stored procedure. Is this possible? (SQL Server 2005). So it should return:

2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004

Answer 1

This gets all years from 2004 to the present, using a recursive CTE:

with yearlist as 
(
    select 2004 as year
    union all
    select yl.year + 1 as year
    from yearlist yl
    where yl.year + 1 <= YEAR(GetDate())
)

select year from yearlist order by year desc;