TSQL: Finding last key identity value

Often when people need the last inserted ID you see query’s like:

USE AdventureWorks2012;

select
    MAX([SalesOrderDetailID])
FROM
[Sales].[SalesOrderDetail];

On large table’s this can be very expensive especially if the identity column if part of a combined column primary key.

Luckily TSQL has a build in function called “IDENT_CURRENT”. This function gives back the last used identity value for a given table.

select IDENT_CURRENT( '[Sales].[SalesOrderDetail]' );

Till Next Time