[development] Avoiding sub-queries

[Darren Oh]

I am trying to find the highest node ID in a range of the node table.  
So far, the only query that works requires a sub-query:

         $nid = db_result(db_query(db_rewrite_sql("
           SELECT MAX(r.nid)
           FROM (
             SELECT n.nid
             FROM {node} n
             ORDER BY n.nid
             LIMIT %d
           ) r
         "), $count));

I would prefer for my module to continue working for users stuck with  
MySQL versions lower than 4.1. Is there any way to rewrite this query  
so it doesn't use a sub-query?