Chris Cathers

  • Interests: SQL, Of course, & Programing, writing, and reviewiong missions for the Video Game Operation FlashPoint.

SQLServerCentral Article

Custom String Functions

SQL Server's Data Transformation Services (DTS) is a fantastic tool for importing data from any type of source. However even with this tool, you sometimes need more flexibility than it appears to have, especially if the data formats are unknown far enough in advance. New author Chris Cathers has developed a technique that allows him to be extremely flexible without causing too many headaches down the road.

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2004-10-18

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Question of the Day

Checking Identities

The DBCC CHECKIDENT command is used when working with identity values. I have a table with 10 rows in it that looks like this:

TravelLogID CityID  StartDate   EndDate
1           1       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
2           2       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
3           3       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
4           4       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
5           5       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
6           6       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
7           7       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
8           8       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
9           9       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
10          10      2025-01-11  2025-01-16
The docs for DBCC CHECKIDENT say this if I run with only the table parameter: "If the current identity value for a table is less than the maximum identity value stored in the identity column, it is reset using the maximum value in the identity column. " I run this code:
DELETE dbo.TravelLog WHERE TravelLogID >= 9
GO
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog, RESEED)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-09-14', '2025-09-17')
GO
What is the identity value for the new row inserted by the insert statement above?

See possible answers