SQL - How to find the highest number in a column?

Question

Let\'s say I have the following data in the Customers table: (nothing more)

ID   FirstName   LastName
-------------------------------
20   John        Macken         


        

Answer 1

If you're not using auto-incrementing fields, you can achieve a similar result with something like the following:

insert into Customers (ID, FirstName, LastName)
    select max(ID)+1, 'Barack', 'Obama' from Customers;

This will ensure there's no chance of a race condition which could be caused by someone else inserting into the table between your extraction of the maximum ID and your insertion of the new record.

This is using standard SQL, there are no doubt better ways to achieve it with specific DBMS' but they're not necessarily portable (something we take very seriously in our shop).