IF EXISTS, THEN SELECT ELSE INSERT AND THEN SELECT

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You need to do this in transaction to ensure two simultaneous clients won’t insert same fieldValue twice:

SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
BEGIN TRANSACTION
    DECLARE @id AS INT
    SELECT @id = tableId FROM table WHERE fieldValue=@newValue
    IF @id IS NULL
    BEGIN
       INSERT INTO table (fieldValue) VALUES (@newValue)
       SELECT @id = SCOPE_IDENTITY()
    END
    SELECT @id
COMMIT TRANSACTION

you can also use Double-checked locking to reduce locking overhead

DECLARE @id AS INT
SELECT @id = tableID FROM table (NOLOCK) WHERE fieldValue=@newValue
IF @id IS NULL
BEGIN
    SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE
    BEGIN TRANSACTION
        SELECT @id = tableID FROM table WHERE fieldValue=@newValue
        IF @id IS NULL
        BEGIN
           INSERT INTO table (fieldValue) VALUES (@newValue)
           SELECT @id = SCOPE_IDENTITY()
        END
    COMMIT TRANSACTION
END
SELECT @id

As for why ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE is necessary, when you are inside a serializable transaction, the first SELECT that hits the table creates a range lock covering the place where the record should be, so nobody else can insert the same record until this transaction ends.

Without ISOLATION LEVEL SERIALIZABLE, the default isolation level (READ COMMITTED) would not lock the table at read time, so between SELECT and UPDATE, somebody would still be able to insert. Transactions with READ COMMITTED isolation level do not cause SELECT to lock. Transactions with REPEATABLE READS lock the record (if found) but not the gap.

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