It's a health care company, so they do a lot of data importing, I assume.

The client stated that the candidate must understand Identity in SQL. They need to know what it is and how to retrieve it after the data is inserted into a table. They’re answer can’t be, “I run a select after inserting the data”

@@IDENTITY.

Was almost a stupid question. Well, I guess it shows how little I know, because I had to read the documentation. (Man, they cram a LOT of info under one little key on my keyboard!!! Are the rest of the keys as full of info as F1?)

(You can turn SET IDENTITY INSERT ON/OFF to allow inserting values into an IDENTITY column... so I assume they're importing parent/child records into existing tables.)

I guess now I have to see if I can figure out how to use it with BULK INSERT and all those . I would assume they're either using SSIS (which I know you hate), or BULKINSERT... I saw a few articles, maybe I'll have to read up here and maybe watch a video or two...

To me, it just seemed weird that that was their only question... Seems like they must do a fair amount of SSIS or something and call BULKINSERT or whatever inside their for each loop or something.

OH, and then there are the related commands: SCOPE_IDENTITY() and IDENT_CURRENT().... hmm... won't be getting an interview for that job!