How do you return 1 value per row of the max of several columns:
TableName
[Number, Date1, Date2, Date3, Cost]
I n
Scalar Function cause all sorts of performance issues, so its better to wrap the logic into an Inline Table Valued Function if possible. This is the function I used to replace some User Defined Functions which selected the Min/Max dates from a list of upto ten dates. When tested on my dataset of 1 Million rows the Scalar Function took over 15 minutes before I killed the query the Inline TVF took 1 minute which is the same amount of time as selecting the resultset into a temporary table. To use this call the function from either a subquery in the the SELECT or a CROSS APPLY.
CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Get_Min_Max_Date
(
@Date1 datetime,
@Date2 datetime,
@Date3 datetime,
@Date4 datetime,
@Date5 datetime,
@Date6 datetime,
@Date7 datetime,
@Date8 datetime,
@Date9 datetime,
@Date10 datetime
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(
SELECT Max(DateValue) Max_Date,
Min(DateValue) Min_Date
FROM (
VALUES (@Date1),
(@Date2),
(@Date3),
(@Date4),
(@Date5),
(@Date6),
(@Date7),
(@Date8),
(@Date9),
(@Date10)
) AS Dates(DateValue)
)
If you are using SQL Server 2005, you can use the UNPIVOT feature. Here is a complete example:
create table dates
(
number int,
date1 datetime,
date2 datetime,
date3 datetime
)
insert into dates values (1, '1/1/2008', '2/4/2008', '3/1/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/2/2008', '2/3/2008', '3/3/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/3/2008', '2/2/2008', '3/2/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/4/2008', '2/1/2008', '3/4/2008')
select max(dateMaxes)
from (
select
(select max(date1) from dates) date1max,
(select max(date2) from dates) date2max,
(select max(date3) from dates) date3max
) myTable
unpivot (dateMaxes For fieldName In (date1max, date2max, date3max)) as tblPivot
drop table dates
Based on the ScottPletcher's solution from http://www.experts-exchange.com/Microsoft/Development/MS-SQL-Server/Q_24204894.html I’ve created a set of functions (e.g. GetMaxOfDates3 , GetMaxOfDates13 )to find max of up to 13 Date values using UNION ALL. See T-SQL function to Get Maximum of values from the same row However I haven't considered UNPIVOT solution at the time of writing these functions
Well, you can use the CASE statement:
SELECT
CASE
WHEN Date1 >= Date2 AND Date1 >= Date3 THEN Date1
WHEN Date2 >= Date1 AND Date2 >= Date3 THEN Date2
WHEN Date3 >= Date1 AND Date3 >= Date2 THEN Date3
ELSE Date1
END AS MostRecentDate
[For Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and above, you may consider Sven's simpler answer below.]
Either of the two samples below will work:
SELECT MAX(date_columns) AS max_date
FROM ( (SELECT date1 AS date_columns
FROM data_table )
UNION
( SELECT date2 AS date_columns
FROM data_table
)
UNION
( SELECT date3 AS date_columns
FROM data_table
)
) AS date_query
The second is an add-on to lassevk's answer.
SELECT MAX(MostRecentDate)
FROM ( SELECT CASE WHEN date1 >= date2
AND date1 >= date3 THEN date1
WHEN date2 >= date1
AND date2 >= date3 THEN date2
WHEN date3 >= date1
AND date3 >= date2 THEN date3
ELSE date1
END AS MostRecentDate
FROM data_table
) AS date_query
Using CROSS APPLY (for 2005+) ....
SELECT MostRecentDate
FROM SourceTable
CROSS APPLY (SELECT MAX(d) MostRecentDate FROM (VALUES (Date1), (Date2), (Date3)) AS a(d)) md