Possible to implement a manual increment with just simple SQL INSERT?

Question

I have a primary key that I don\'t want to auto increment (for various reasons) and so I\'m looking for a way to simply increment that field when I INSERT. By simply, I mean

Answer 1

This should work:

INSERT INTO Table1 (id, data_field)
SELECT (SELECT (MAX(id) + 1) FROM Table1), '[blob of data]';

Or this (substitute LIMIT for other platforms):

INSERT INTO Table1 (id, data_field)
SELECT TOP 1
    MAX(id) + 1, '[blob of data]'
FROM
   Table1
ORDER BY
   [id] DESC;