Highest value from a column

[student_help]

Hi

I need assistance. I have a column which can have random length but I need to find the highest value in this column. e.g. the Column could contain ABC1234 and ABC125 and I need to find the MAX value in this column which in this case would be ABC1234. I have tried the MAX(column_tabl e) but it was returning ABC125 as the highest value (I am guessing it was adding a zero to the end).

Would someone be able to point me in the direction of finding a solution to this problem?

Thank you for your time. please let me know if you have any questions.

[Newface]

Select top 1 [column_table]
from [table_name]
group by [column_table]
order by [max(len([column_table]))] desc



Note:Please use Rownum in place of top if using oracle after where clause.

[Rabbit]

Define max. Z0 is bigger than all the ones in your example if you're looking at ASCII value. AAAAAAAAAA00000 00 is bigger if you're looking at length. Without a clear definition, we can't help you.

[student_help]

It turned out the query was returning me the correct result - it was a join which was being used at a later stage in the query which was causing the issue.

Apologies for wasting your time - this is the joy of working with code that has no comments or documentation anywhere in it.

Thank you very much for your replies and help