Getting the last record in SQL in WHERE condition

Question

i have loanTable that contain two field loan_id and status

loan_id status
==============
1       0
2       9
1       6
         


        

Answer 1

Use a data reader. When it exits the while loop it will be on the last row. As the other posters stated unless you put a sort on the query, the row order could change. Even if there is a clustered index on the table it might not return the rows in that order (without a sort on the clustered index).

    SqlDataReader rdr = SQLcmd.ExecuteReader();
    while (rdr.Read())
    {
    }
    string lastVal = rdr[0].ToString()
    rdr.Close();

You could also use a ROW_NUMBER() but that requires a sort and you cannot use ROW_NUMBER() directly in the Where. But you can fool it by creating a derived table. The rdr solution above is faster.