Question

As part of a transaction I’m modifying rows in tables via a server link, so have to specify “SET XACT_ABORT ON” in my sproc otherwise it won’t execute. Now I’m noticing that SCOPE_IDENTITY() is returning NULL, which is presumably something to do with the distributed transaction scope?

Does anyone know why and how to resolve?

Answer 1

From @@IDENTITY:

The scope of the @@IDENTITY function
is current session on the local server
on which it is executed. This function
cannot be applied to remote or linked
servers. To obtain an identity value
on a different server, execute a
stored procedure on that remote or
linked server and have that stored
procedure (which is executing in the
context of the remote or linked
server) gather the identity value and
return it to the calling connection on
the local server.

And note that although it talks about IDENT_CURRENT and SCOPE_IDENTITY in surrounding paragraphs, they make no appearance in this paragraph; i.e. none of them will work to retrieve identity values from remote servers.