SQL - INSERT with Scope_Identity() - getting the record id

Question

I have an ASP.NET page written in VB.NET that gets the items into a GridView by using a SELECT statement with INNER JOIN and also allo

Answer 1

Why are you doing this in multiple statements in the first place? Why not:

INSERT dbo.Items (item_name,  item_cost, item_code) 
  OUTPUT inserted.ItemID, @ProjectID, @ItemQuantity 
  INTO dbo.project_items(item_id, project_id, item_quantity)
VALUES (@ItemName, @ItemCost, @ItemCode);

Now you only have to call one ExecuteNonQuery() and your app doesn't have to care about the actually SCOPE_IDENTITY() value generated. (You can still retrieve SCOPE_IDENTITY() if you want, of course, using ExecuteScalar - but as Nenad rightly points out, pick one instead of calling both.)

Since we now know that there is an explicit foreign key here, we can still reduce your C# code to one call even if we can't use the OUTPUT clause.

DECLARE @i INT;

INSERT dbo.Items (item_name,  item_cost, item_code) 
  SELECT @ItemName, @ItemCost, @ItemCode;

SELECT @i = SCOPE_IDENTITY();

INSERT dbo.project_items(item_id, project_id, item_quantity)
  SELECT @i, @ProjectID, @ItemQuantity 

SELECT @i; -- if necessary

Would be even cleaner to put this into a stored procedure.