SQL date compare

Question

I have a table with 1000 records. One column is the publish date which takes the format '2008-01-02 00:00:00.000' . I want to query the SQL DB to get the record with the latest publish date. should i just do a compare or there is some other filter?

Answer 1

SELECT * FROM tbl WHERE publishdate = (SELECT MAX(publishdate) FROM tbl)

Answer 2

If you want just one record:

SELECT TOP 1 * FROM mytable ORDER BY publishdate DESC

If you want ALL books with the highest publish date, use Cade Roux's query.

Answer 3

If publishdate is datetime

SELECT TOP 1  *
FROM tbl
ORDER BY publishdate DESC