Does SQL Server guarantee sequential inserting of an identity column?

Question

In other words, is the following \"cursoring\" approach guaranteed to work:

1. retrieve rows from DB
2. save the largest ID from the returned records for later,

Answer 1

The only time records might get inserted that you wouldn't get would be if someone turns the identity insert on and manually inserts a record to a skipped id (or in some cases to a negative number). This is a fairly rare occurance and generally would only be done by a system admin. Might be done to reinsert an accidentally deleted record for instance.