How to get last identity row Inserted when using instead of trigger

Question

When I inserted on tables that exists instead of triggers on those. @@Identity , IDENT_CURRENT('Table') and SCOPE_IDENTITY() return null. How I can get last identity of inserted row

Answer 1

With an INSTEAD_OF trigger it means no insert occurred yet. You cannot know the identity since it wasn't yet generated. Sneaking the value from metadata is possible (DBCC CHECKIDENT) but relying on it will not work correctly under concurrency and besides it requires elevated privileges.

INSTEAD_OF triggers are extremely seldom required and a serious code smell. Are you sure you need it? Can't you do the work with a regular AFTER trigger?

Answer 2

In your instead of trigger, you definitely can get the inserted value... but not until after you've performed the insert.

USE tempdb;
GO

CREATE TABLE dbo.SmellThis
(
  id INT IDENTITY(1,1),
  name VARCHAR(32)
);
GO

CREATE TRIGGER dbo.SmellThis_First
ON dbo.SmellThis
INSTEAD OF INSERT
AS
BEGIN
    SET NOCOUNT ON;

    DECLARE @ids TABLE(id INT);

    IF NOT EXISTS 
    (
      SELECT 1 FROM sys.objects AS o
        INNER JOIN inserted AS i
        ON o.name = i.name
    )
    INSERT dbo.SmellThis(name)  
      OUTPUT inserted.id INTO @ids
      SELECT name 
      FROM inserted;

    SELECT id FROM @ids;
END
GO

INSERT dbo.SmellThis(name) SELECT 'Remus';
GO

Results:

id
----
1

Now clean up:

DROP TABLE dbo.SmellThis;

As an aside, you should never, ever, ever be using @@IDENTITY or IDENT_CURRENT() anyway. And SCOPE_IDENTITY should be reserved for situations where you know only one row can ever be inserted. A common misconception with triggers is that they fire per row, like in other platforms, but in SQL Server they fire per operation - so a multi-row insert using VALUES(),(),() or INSERT...SELECT - which SCOPE_IDENTITY would you be setting to your variable?