Auto incrementing / last row grabbing.

[Anon]

I have a database where the ID field is in the form XXYYYY, where XX is a
couple of letters, and YYYY is a numerical value, which needs to increment
by 1 for each entry. Since there is text being used in this field, I can't
make it auto_increment.. what would be the best way to handle this then?
How can I grab the last value? All I can think of is cutting off the YYYY
using substr, then adding 1 to the YYYY value. I need to know how to get
the last row in the table though first.. of course there might be an easier
way too, so any advice would be appreciated 🙂

[Anon]

Does the ID have to contain the letters? If your tables are sorted correctly there shouldn't be any reason to use anything but numerical row ID's. As for finding out the last row, do a row count, and whatever the row count returns is also the number of the last row.