Question

Okay so here is my database:

I have a page on my .net form that lets users insert a workout and the related muscles for that workout into an access database.

Once I insert a record to the WorkOuts table, how do I insert the related muscles into the MuscleGroup table without having the select the max ID of the workout that was just inserted? I want to insert everything in together, at the same time. Hopefully my question makes sense, I think this is a common database issue, but I haven’t found a solution yet.

Answer 1

Although I agree you should look into using alternate RDBM’S, you can use the following code (assumes you are using OLEDB and C#) to retrieve the correct AutoNumber generated by an MS-Access Insert statement:

public static object InsertRow_ReturnKey()
{
  try
  {
    using (OleDbConnection con = new OleDbConnection())
    {
      con.ConnectionString = Users.GetConnectionString();
      con.Open();
      OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand();
      cmd.Connection = con;
      cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text;
      cmd.CommandText = "INSERT INTO WorkOuts(Workout) VALUES('Abs')";
      cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
      cmd.CommandText = "SELECT @@IDENTITY";
      return cmd.ExecuteScalar();
    }
  }
  catch (Exception ex)
  {
    System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(ex.Message);
    System.Web.HttpContext.Current.Response.StatusCode = 500;
    return null;
  }
}

Call it by using:

int newID = (int)DB.InsertRow_ReturnKey();