Honestly I don't know where he got the idea, but as someone who worked for five years as a SQL Server database admin/developer, I for some reason also thought y

Honestly I don't know where he got the idea, but as someone who worked for five years as a SQL Server database admin/developer, I for some reason also thought you could only do OUTPUT Inserted.field1, ... INTO @TableVar But I just tested what you claimed here and it definitely works exactly the way the RETURNING clause would. Weird.