One of my friend and my colleague Mr Jithin asked me about the difference between @@IDENTITY,SCOPE_IDENTITY() and IDENT_CURRENT.During one of my interviews it acts as a question.
SELECT @@IDENTITY
It returns the last IDENTITY value(auto_increment value) produced on a connection, regardless of the table that produced the value, and regardless of the scope of the statement that produced the value.
@@IDENTITY will return the last identity value entered into a table in your current session. While @@IDENTITY is limited to the current session, it is not limited to the current scope. If you have a trigger on a table that causes an identity to be created in another table, you will get the identity that was created last, even if it was the trigger that created it.
SELECT SCOPE_IDENTITY()
It returns the last IDENTITY value produced on a connection and by a statement in the same scope, regardless of the table that produced the value.
SCOPE_IDENTITY(), like @@IDENTITY, will return the last identity value created in the current session, but it will also limit it to your current scope as well. In other words, it will return the last identity value that you explicitly created, rather than any identity that was created by a trigger or a user defined function.
SELECT IDENT_CURRENT(‘tablename’)
It returns the last IDENTITY value produced in a table, regardless of the connection that created the value, and regardless of the scope of the statement that produced the value.
IDENT_CURRENT is not limited by scope and session; it is limited to a specified table. IDENT_CURRENT returns the identity value generated for a specific table in any session and any scope.