scope_identity vs ident_current

Question

After much research I am a little confused by which identity tracker I should use in sql.

From what I understand scope_identity will give me the last id updated fro

Answer 1

SELECT IDENT_CURRENT -- as you said will give you the table specific last inserted identity value. There are issues associated with this, one the user need to have permission to see the metadata otherwise it returns NULL and second you are hardcoding the name of the table , which will cause a problem in case the table name changes.

The best practice is to use Scope_Identity together with a variable ...Look the following example

 DECLARE @myFirstTableID INT

  DECLARE @mySecondTableID INT

  INSERT INTO MYFirstTable (....) VALUES (.....)

   SELECT @myFirstTableID =SCOPE_IDENTITY()


  INSERT INTO MYSecondTable () VALUES (.....)


   SELECT @mySecondTableID=SCOPE_IDENTITY()

Thus by making use of variable and scope_identity next to the insert statement of interest, you can make sure that you are getting the right identity from the right table. Enjoy