There is a table which increments the primary key field by 1 for each new entry.

Is there a way to retrieve the value of this key?

for example: AGENTID,AGENTNAME .. the agent id field increments.

my sql statement that i use with jdbc looks like this: INSERT INTO FILE (AGENTNAME) VALUES('ME')

and now i need the ID it generated. do i need to do another query?

Try
SET :your-receiving-field = IDENTITY_VAL_LOCAL()
after insert
This function returns your last inserted id

By the way this is the COBOL format which may be different a little from Java

Isaac ElSerafi