Question

I have SQL table in SQL server 2008, and I want to get latest record which depends on its date.

E.g. Lets say I have records with some column and a Date column which contain the date of creation of record.
Lets sat the date column contains following dates. 22-Dec, 23-Dec, 24-Dec, 25,Dec, 26-Dec.

Now , I want to fetch the record which is less than 25 Dec, but I want the latest date record, If I write the query

select * from Table where CreateDate < '25-Dec-2012' 

then It will return 3 records but I want the latest record from them i.e. 24 Dec record

How to do it ?

Answer 1

You should add TOP 1 to your query, and order it in reverse of its natural order to get your last record first. Assuming that the default order is by CreateDate in ascending order, the ORDER BY CreateDate DESC should do the trick:

SELECT TOP 1 *
FROM Table
WHERE CreateDate < '25-Dec-2012' 
ORDER BY CreateDate DESC