>A table has an index column that starts at one and goes to N, with some missing values. Is there an SQL Select statement (its ok to use more than one) that will return the first x items that are NOT present in the column?
>
>TIA,
>
>Alex

Create a Numbers table (see, for example):
http://blogs.lessthandot.com/index.php/DataMgmt/DataDesign/passing-multiple-ranges-to-stored-proced

Once you have the Numbers table:

select top (N) N.Number from myTable T RIGHT JOIN Numbers N on T.IndexCol = N.Number
WHERE T.IndexCol IS NULL
ORDER BY N.Number