What's the best way to select the minimum value from several columns?

Question

Given the following table in SQL Server 2005:

ID   Col1   Col2   Col3
--   ----   ----   ----
1       3     34     76  
2      32    976     24
3       7             


        

Answer 1

There are likely to be many ways to accomplish this. My suggestion is to use Case/When to do it. With 3 columns, it's not too bad.

Select Id,
       Case When Col1 < Col2 And Col1 < Col3 Then Col1
            When Col2 < Col1 And Col2 < Col3 Then Col2 
            Else Col3
            End As TheMin
From   YourTableNameHere