Find Most Recent Date

Hey all, I am trying to find a way to locate the most recent date in a table based on rows of multiple columns. In other words, given a single case with variables X1, X2 and X3 I want the beastmode to find the latest date. So if column 1 was 1/1/2015, column 2 was 2/2/2014 and column 3 was 5/1/2016 then the calculation would return 5/1/2016.

Thanks all!

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Oh yeah, that's a different story. Two dozen columns would be a nightmare with what I suggested.

The SQL function GREATEST() would probably work well in this case but BeastMode doesn't have that function that I'm aware.

What's your use case, just finding a max value from an entire dataset? (try using a SQL dataflow with GREATEST)

Or max value from any number of dimensional breakdowns that might be chosen with a card filter? (not sure what to do there but you'd need a BeastMode)

All comments

I'd suggest doing something like max(max(x1),max(x2),max(x3)), but I don't think beastmode max functions will allow that.

Can you do a case statement with boolean?

case 
when max(x1) >= max(x2) and max(x1) >= max(x3) then max(x1)
when max(x2) >= max(x1) and max(x2) >= max(x3) then max(x2)
when max(x3) >= max(x1) and max(x3) >= max(x2) then max(x3)
end

Seemed to work for me when I tested it.

mbelmont

Yes, however I was hoping for a more elegant solution because I have about two dozen columns that I need to check against.

Oh yeah, that's a different story. Two dozen columns would be a nightmare with what I suggested.

The SQL function GREATEST() would probably work well in this case but BeastMode doesn't have that function that I'm aware.

What's your use case, just finding a max value from an entire dataset? (try using a SQL dataflow with GREATEST)

Or max value from any number of dimensional breakdowns that might be chosen with a card filter? (not sure what to do there but you'd need a BeastMode)

kshah008

@mbelmont, tagging you to check out AS's reply.

mbelmont

Yes, I am simply trying to find the most recent date from a table. I think a SQL dataflow would work. Thanks.

rado98

For the non-SQL people like me....

Collapsing all date columns into a single column using ETL, then applying a MAX in ETL or beastmode should also do the trick

BSovers

I needed to do this with 16 source columns, with the added "fun", that

case when Col x > Col Y then Col x else Col y end —- had to be extended to:

Case when col x is null then col y when Col y is null then Col x when Col x > Col Y then Col x else Col y end…

I "handled" it with a total of 15 calculated fields max_ab, max_cd… max_op, max_abcd, … max_mnop, … max_a_h, max_i_p, then finally max_a_p.

This would have been SO much easier with a GREATEST function! As long as it correctly handled null values!