How do I use an INSERT statement's OUTPUT clause to get the identity value?

Question

If I have an insert statement such as:

INSERT INTO MyTable
(  
  Name,
  Address,
  PhoneNo
)
VALUES
(
  'Yatrix',
   '1234 Address Stuff',
   '1112223333'
)

How do I set @var INT to the new row's identity value (called Id) using the OUTPUT clause? I've seen samples of putting INSERTED.Name into table variables, for example, but I can't get it into a non-table variable.

I've tried OUPUT INSERTED.Id AS @var, SET @var = INSERTED.Id, but neither have worked.

I know about @@SCOPE_IDENTITY already, I specifically want to know how to do it with OUPUT. Thanks. — Yatrix
You need to insert it into a table variable then select from that. There is no syntax to assign directly to a scalar variable from the OUTPUT clause. — Martin Smith
The OUTPUT clause has to output into a table or table variable.. — mellamokb
The OUTPUT clause writes to a table. It can be a table variable, temporary table, ... . — HABO

marc_s marc_s · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-12T15:07:29

You can either have the newly inserted ID being output to the SSMS console like this:

INSERT INTO MyTable(Name, Address, PhoneNo)
OUTPUT INSERTED.ID
VALUES ('Yatrix', '1234 Address Stuff', '1112223333')

You can use this also from e.g. C#, when you need to get the ID back to your calling app - just execute the SQL query with .ExecuteScalar() (instead of .ExecuteNonQuery()) to read the resulting ID back.

Or if you need to capture the newly inserted ID inside T-SQL (e.g. for later further processing), you need to create a table variable:

DECLARE @OutputTbl TABLE (ID INT)

INSERT INTO MyTable(Name, Address, PhoneNo)
OUTPUT INSERTED.ID INTO @OutputTbl(ID)
VALUES ('Yatrix', '1234 Address Stuff', '1112223333')

This way, you can put multiple values into @OutputTbl and do further processing on those. You could also use a "regular" temporary table (#temp) or even a "real" persistent table as your "output target" here.

How do I use an INSERT statement's OUTPUT clause to get the identity value?

1 Answers