Question

Is there a tsql query to tell what SQL server identity column value it expects to use for the next row insert?

Edited to add:

I deleted and recreated a table with

[personID] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL 

as part of my CREATE TABLE command. I’ve also attempted to reseed identity columns while removing all information in that table and that hasn’t always worked. It got me to wondering if there was a way to see what SQL expected to use for your next identity column number.

Answer 1

No, there isn’t any guaranteed way (although you can certainly find out what the next value might be, another command might go and use it before you can make any use of it). The only guaranteed value you can retrieve is the previously inserted identity value through SCOPE_IDENTITY() (which will return the identity value last generated for the current scope).

It’s questionable what purpose why one would need to know the value before (when using an automatically incremented seeded identity column).

If you need to know the value before, then I recommend generating the ids yourself. You can do this with an ids table keyed on the table name, or, if you have scalability concerns (and you are using transactions) you can have an id table for each table that needs an id which would have the id to be inserted (and subsequently incremented).

Or, you could use a GUID, and you would be able to easily generate these on the client side before sending it to your database.