Selecting most recent date between two columns

Question

If I have a table that (among other columns) has two DATETIME columns, how would I select the most recent date from those two columns.

Example:

Answer 1

AFAIK, there is no built-in function to get the maximum of two values, but you can write your own easily as:

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.GetMaximumDate(@date1 DATETIME, @date2 DATETIME)
RETURNS DATETIME
AS
BEGIN
    IF (@date1 > @date2)
        RETURN @date1
    RETURN @date2
END

and call it as

SELECT Id, dbo.GetMaximumDate(Date1, Date2)
FROM tableName