Question

Lets say I have two tables

tblA (
tableAID INT IDENTITY(1,1),
foo VARCHAR(100))

tblB (
tableBID INTIDENTITY(1,1),
tableAID INT,
bar varchar(100))

tblB.tableAID is a FK to tblA.

I want to insert a bunch of records (pulled from some other table in the system) into this pair of tables. I need to know what the ID from inserting into tblA is before I can insert into tblB.

Is there any way to do this without processing it row-by-row?

Answer 1

In SQL Server 2005 and later, you can use the OUTPUT clause to pass the new key values into a second table:

INSERT INTO T ...
OUTPUT PrimaryKeycol, otherValues INTO ChildTable;

Other possibilies exist in SQL Server 2008 with “composable DML” and the MERGE statement.

Added in response to comment:

create table T(i int identity(1,1), j int, k int default -1);
go

merge into T using (values (1), (2)) as U(j)
on U.j = T.j
when not matched then insert (j) values (j)
output inserted.i, inserted.k;
go

drop table T;