Find Maximum date SQL Server

Question

I am using below query to find max date,getting output as "30-12-2017" , whereas the output should be "15-12-2018" .my sample data is attached, data type is nvarchar and SQL Server 2008.

select MAX(date1) from tblMonth

Answer 1

Your datatype for Date1 seems to be nvarchar . The MAX() on nvarchar 's is a string compare. The string 30-12-2017 starts with 30 , which has the biggest ASCII code in your example. If you enter 31-11-2017 , this would be the result of MAX(date1) .

Use a date datatype (ie datetime2 or date ) instead and it will work as you expect.