I have several tables that require auto-generated Ids. I have noticed the serial and bigserial data types (or pseudo-types). These seem like they make things much simpler, but if you use this, how can you find out the the value of the serial column after you insert a row? Do you have to lookup the primary key or is it stored in a session variable or some other place? Is it better to define the sequence manually and just select it out by hand before doing the insert?
Thanks,