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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T10:09:19+00:00

I am currently tasked with a project on a database whose schema cannot be

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I am currently tasked with a project on a database whose schema cannot be changed. I need to insert a new row into a table that requires an ID to be unique, but the original creators of the structure did not set this value to autoincrement. To go around this, I have been using code akin to:

(SELECT TOP 1 [ID] from [Table] ORDER BY [ID] DESC) + 1

when giving the value of the ID field, basically having an inner query of sorts. Problem is that a few lines down, I need that ID I just inputted. If I could set a SQLParameter to output for this column, I could get the value it was set to, problem is I’m using SQL, and not a hard value like I do with other SQLParameters. Can’t I use SQL in place of just a value?

This is a potential high volume exchange, so I’d rather not do 2 different queries (one to get id, then one to insert).

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  1. Editorial Team

    You say you cannot change the schema, but can you add an additional table to the project that does an autoincrement column? Then you could use that table to (safely) create your new IDs and return them to your code.

    This is similar to how Oracle does IDs, and sometimes vendor applications for sql server that also run on Oracle will use that approach just to help minimize the differences between the two databases.

    Update:
    Ah, I just spotted your comment to the other answer here. In that case, the only other thing I can think that might work is to put your two statements (insert a new ID, and then read back the new ID) inside a transaction with the SERIALIZABLE isolation level. And that just kinda sucks, because it leaves you open to performance and locking gotchas.

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