Re: NEWBIE: How do I get the oldest date contained in 3 tables

[Brent Wood <b.wood@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Lorenzo Thurman wrote:
> I have three tables using date fields. I want to retrieve the oldest 
> date contained in the tables. Can someone show me an example of a 
> query that would do that?
You could write a custom function doing the same sort of thing, or 
(perhaps more portable) use generic sqls & views like:

create view min_dates as
select min(date1) from table1as date_1
union
select min(date2) from table2 as date_1
union                             
select min(date3) from table3 as date_1;

then either:

select min(date_1) from min_dates;


or

create view min_date as
select min(date_1) as min_date
from min_dates;

then just:

select min_date from min_date;



Cheers

  Brent Wood