Question

I would like to retrieve the latest inserted or even updated identity from a table. But whenever I write the following code there is no results at all.

select * 
from PersonHowEducation prh 
inner join HowzeEducation he on prh.HowzeEducationId = he.HowzeEducationId
where he.HowzeEducationId = @@IDENTITY

What shall I really do ?

Answer 1

If this were part of a batch script, and you have only just inserted it in the same session, then you would use SCOPE_IDENTITY() to retrieve the last inserted HowzeEducationId value.

select * from PersonHowEducation prh inner join HowzeEducation he on 
      prh.HowzeEducationId=he.HowzeEducationId
      where he.HowzeEducationId=SCOPE_IDENTITY()

However, if this is from a completely different session, one that DID NOT JUST perform the insert, then you can get the last record inserted using

select * from PersonHowEducation prh inner join HowzeEducation he on 
      prh.HowzeEducationId=he.HowzeEducationId
      where he.HowzeEducationId=(select top(1) HowzeEducationId from HowzeEducation
                                 order by HowzeEducationId desc)

Note: There could be rare cases where an identity insert does not create the largest id in the table, for example if someone decided a table should have 1 record of id= 1,000,000,001 and manually reseeded the identity back to 10,001.

Another alternative, which may fizz if it is possible for the record to be deleted after insertion.

select * from PersonHowEducation prh inner join HowzeEducation he on 
      prh.HowzeEducationId=he.HowzeEducationId
      where he.HowzeEducationId=(SELECT IDENT_CURRENT('HowzeEducation'))