@@IDENTITY, SCOPE_IDENTITY(), OUTPUT and other methods of retrieving last identity

It depends on what you are trying to do...

@@IDENTITY

Returns the last IDENTITY value produced on a connection, regardless of the table that produced the value, and regardless of the scope of the statement that produced the value.@@IDENTITY will return the last identity value entered into a table in your current session. @@IDENTITY is limited to the current session and is not limited to the current scope. For example, if you have a trigger on a table that causes an identity to be created in another table, you will get the identity that was created last, even if it was the trigger that created it.

SCOPE_IDENTITY()

Returns the last IDENTITY value produced on a connection and by a statement in the same scope, regardless of the table that produced the value.SCOPE_IDENTITY() is similar to @@IDENTITY, but it will also limit the value to your current scope. In other words, it will return the last identity value that you explicitly created, rather than any identity that was created by a trigger or a user defined function.

IDENT_CURRENT()

Returns the last IDENTITY value produced in a table, regardless of the connection and scope of the statement that produced the value. IDENT_CURRENT is limited to a specified table, but not by connection or scope.

Note that there is a bug in scope_identity() and @@identity - see MS Connect: https://web.archive.org/web/20130412223343/https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/328811/scope-identity-sometimes-returns-incorrect-value

A quote (from Microsoft):

I highly recommend using OUTPUT instead of @@IDENTITY in all cases.It's just the best way there is to read identity and timestamp.

Edited to add: this may be fixed now. Connect is giving me an error, but see:

Scope_Identity() returning incorrect value fixed?

There is almost no reason to use anything besides an OUTPUT clause when trying to get the identity of the row(s) just inserted. The OUTPUT clause is scope and table safe.

Here's a simple example of getting the id after inserting a single row...

DECLARE @Inserted AS TABLE (MyTableId INT);INSERT [MyTable] (MyTableColOne, MyTableColTwo)OUTPUT Inserted.MyTableId INTO @InsertedVALUES ('Val1','Val2')SELECT MyTableId FROM @Inserted

Detailed docs for OUTPUT clause: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms177564.aspx

-- table structure for example:     CREATE TABLE MyTable (    MyTableId int NOT NULL IDENTITY (1, 1),    MyTableColOne varchar(50) NOT NULL,    MyTableColTwo varchar(50) NOT NULL)