Quite a few complaints on the QOD section from last week, mostly justified. A couple I had to defend, which is always tough. I have a fairly thick skin on the editorials, but for some reason the QODs tend to annoy me more and I get defensive. So I need to take a deep breath and try to understand what people are posting before I answer.

I think part of the problem is writing a QOD usually means I'm focusing on the trees. I'm tightly digging into a particular topic, usually with the topic in BOL or a blog up on my screen. So I tend not to focus on how this looks in the real world, I'm just testing knowledge, often deep knowledge on one topic. And it's mostly geared towards helping you learn a new part of SQL Server.

So the hint for answering questions is: figure out what I'm working on. Then the answer start to make sense. Don't look at the question in terms of your environment, look at it in terms of a quiz on BOL on some particular topic. Like @@identity. If that's what the question (and answers) seem to be leading you towards, then think about what that topic means and pick the best answer.