Most efficient query to get last modified record in large table

Question

I have a table with a large number of records ( > 300,000). The most relevant fields in the table are:

• CREATE_DATE
• MOD_DATE

Those are updat

Answer 1

Make sure that both of those fields are indexed.

Then I would just run -

select max(mod_date) from table

or create_date, whichever one.

Make sure to create 2 indexes, one on each date field, not a compound index on both.

As for a discussion of the difference between this and using limit, see MIN/MAX vs ORDER BY and LIMIT