MAX vs Top 1 - which is better?

Question

I had to review some code, and came across something that someone did, and can\'t think of a reason why my way is better and it probably isn\'t, so, which is better/safer/mo

Answer 1

For the queries to have the same result you would need:

SELECT MAX(a_date) FROM a_table WHERE a_primary_key = 5

SELECT TOP 1 a_date FROM a_table WHERE a_primary_key = 5 ORDER BY a_date DESC

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The best way to know which is faster is to check the query plan and do your benchmarks. There are many factors that would affect the speed, such as table/heap size, etc. And even different versions of the same database may be optimized to favor one query over the other.