SQL MAX of multiple columns?

Question

How do you return 1 value per row of the max of several columns:

TableName

[Number, Date1, Date2, Date3, Cost]

I need to return something like this:

[Number, Most_Recent_Date, Cost]

Query?

Answer 1

Using CROSS APPLY (for 2005+) ....

SELECT MostRecentDate 
FROM SourceTable
    CROSS APPLY (SELECT MAX(d) MostRecentDate FROM (VALUES (Date1), (Date2), (Date3)) AS a(d)) md

Answer 2

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)
)

Answer 3

DECLARE @TableName TABLE (Number INT, Date1 DATETIME, Date2 DATETIME, Date3 DATETIME, Cost MONEY)

INSERT INTO @TableName 
SELECT 1, '20000101', '20010101','20020101',100 UNION ALL
SELECT 2, '20000101', '19900101','19980101',99 

SELECT Number,
       Cost  ,
       (SELECT MAX([Date])
       FROM    (SELECT Date1 AS [Date]
               UNION ALL
               SELECT Date2
               UNION ALL
               SELECT Date3
               )
               D
       )
       [Most Recent Date]
FROM   @TableName

Answer 4

Unfortunately Lasse's answer, though seemingly obvious, has a crucial flaw. It cannot handle NULL values. Any single NULL value results in Date1 being returned. Unfortunately any attempt to fix that problem tends to get extremely messy and doesn't scale to 4 or more values very nicely.

databyss's first answer looked (and is) good. However, it wasn't clear whether the answer would easily extrapolate to 3 values from a multi-table join instead of the simpler 3 values from a single table. I wanted to avoid turning such a query into a sub-query just to get the max of 3 columns, also I was pretty sure databyss's excellent idea could be cleaned up a bit.

So without further ado, here's my solution (derived from databyss's idea).
It uses cross-joins selecting constants to simulate the effect of a multi-table join. The important thing to note is that all the necessary aliases carry through correctly (which is not always the case) and this keeps the pattern quite simple and fairly scalable through additional columns.

DECLARE @v1 INT ,
        @v2 INT ,
        @v3 INT
--SET @v1 = 1 --Comment out SET statements to experiment with 
              --various combinations of NULL values
SET @v2 = 2
SET @v3 = 3

SELECT  ( SELECT    MAX(Vals)
          FROM      ( SELECT    v1 AS Vals
                      UNION
                      SELECT    v2
                      UNION
                      SELECT    v3
                    ) tmp
          WHERE     Vals IS NOT NULL -- This eliminates NULL warning

        ) AS MaxVal
FROM    ( SELECT    @v1 AS v1
        ) t1
        CROSS JOIN ( SELECT @v2 AS v2
                   ) t2
        CROSS JOIN ( SELECT @v3 AS v3
                   ) t3

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

Please try using UNPIVOT:

SELECT MAX(MaxDt) MaxDt
   FROM tbl 
UNPIVOT
   (MaxDt FOR E IN 
      (Date1, Date2, Date3)
)AS unpvt;