Question : Return the ID of a newly inserted record

I need to find out which ID a newly inserted Record has been assigned by the Database Server. Doing this using 'select max(fieldname) from table' after Insert or 'select max(fieldname)+1 from table' before Insert may be too unsecure; I need a 100% working solution, even if others are working on the database. What can I do?

Answer : Return the ID of a newly inserted record

here is one af many wais:

the insert should be enclosed in a stored procedure.

definiton of table should include

create table
(
...
     [ID]  int identity( 1,1 )
...
)

where int, numeric, decimal, or bigint ( bigint works for SQL Server 2000 only ) is the data type
and body of the stored procedure should protect insert in a transaction, and following the transaction in case of success an identity value can be retrieved this way for SQl Server 7
SELECT @my_variable = @@identity
SQl Server 2000
SELECT @my_variable = IDENT_CURRENT( '' )
at

a more complete exerpt from stored procedure bidy's code may look like this

create procedure ms_insert_with_return_record_id
                                    @values_to_insert_1 int
                                    , ...
                                    , @record_id int = 0 OUT
AS
 
BEGIN TRANSACTION

   insert into t
   (
     colunm_1
     , ...
   )
   select
       @values_to_insert_1
      ,

     SELECT @record_id = @@identity
IF @@error <> 0
BEGIN
     ROLLBACK TRANSACTION
     SELECT @record_id = 0
     return (1) -- error occurred
END
ELSE
     COMMIT TRANSACTION
     return (0) -- no error


Make sure that no value is inserted into the column that is defined as identity. IT will be generated for you, according to the definition at the moment when you created table: identity( 1, 1 ) means start from 1 and add 1 to each new number, identity ( 1, 5 ) means start from 1 and add 5 to each new generated number, as you can see identity follows this definition

identity ( seed, increment )