Safest way to get last record ID from a table

Question

In SQL Server 2008 and higher what is the best/safest/most correct way

1. to retrieve the ID (based on autoincrementing primary key) out of the database table?

Answer 1

You can try:

SELECT id FROM your_table WHERE id = (SELECT MAX(id) FROM your_table)

Where id is a primary key of the your_table