Newbie SQL ? in python.

[len]

I have tried both the pyodbc and mxODBC and with help from the ng been
able to do what I want using either.  My needs are pretty basic some
simple selects and inserts.

The current problem I have hit is the database I am inserting into have
a special ODBC driver that using the files natively has an
autoincrement feature.  However, through the ODBC driver the
autoincrement does not work.  (The explanation I got was the creators
did not anticapate a great need for insert.)  Anyway, I figured not a
problem I will just do a select on the table ordered by the ID field in
descending order and fetch the first record and do the autoincrementing
within the python program.  The code , using pyodbc is as follows.

c.execute("select state_sid from statecode order by state_sid DESC")
sid = c.fetchone()
newsid = sid.state_sid + 1

This code works fine and I get what I want.  My concern is that this
technique used on large files may cause problem.  I really just want to
get what is the last record in the database to get the last ID used.

Is there a better way.  I realize this may be more of an SQL question
but I figured I would try here first.

Len Sumnler