Select Max Date in Year Month Day Format

Question

I have a table that I drew the following sample from:

Item    <other columns> year month day
----    -- ------------ ---- ----- ---
VX4O    GL 630.5938     2012 7     20
BX2T    GL 0            2012 7     13
MWB806I GL 92004.72     2012 6     15
4XU     GL 17.125       2012 7     20
VL4O    GL 130.5        2012 7     20
MWB806I GL 92004        2012 10    26
MWB806I GL 92005        2012 11    30
3PU     GL 25           2012 7     20
VC4O    GL 630.6094     2012 7     20
MWB806I GL 92005        2012 11    2

The first column is Item, the last three columns are year, month, day.

How do I select the max date per item?

Answer 1

SELECT Item, MAX(CONVERT(DATETIME, RTRIM([year]) 
  + RIGHT('0'+RTRIM([month]), 2) 
  + RIGHT('0'+RTRIM([day], 2)
)
FROM dbo.table
GROUP BY Item;

Now you really should consider fixing this schema. Why are you storing year/month/day separately? All it does is make calculations like this one much more difficult, and prevents any proper validation (you can have check constraints for basic stuff, but these are much more complex for things like leap years). And it doesn't save you any space (in fact you lose space if month/day are int, or if you can use smalldatetime).