Max vs. Last

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Guest

It's been awhile since I've worked with one particluar database of mine and I
have forgotten the distinction betwen last and max - could some one help?
 
Last would assume a specific order to records with Access tables don't have
unless you apply a sort order. Max is max.
 
Max = biggest value
Last = the last record retrieved. Can be the most recent record added, but not
necessarily. Thinks of First and Last as being the equivalent of getting a
random record in the group.
 
Bibi said:
It's been awhile since I've worked with one particluar database of mine
and I
have forgotten the distinction betwen last and max - could some one help?
Click to expand...

Max has some usefulness, Last does not.
 
Max = biggest value
Last = the last record retrieved. Can be the most recent record added, but not
necessarily. Thinks of First and Last as being the equivalent of getting a
random record in the group.
 
Hi,


Last has it uses, it is the "row"-aggregate Joe Celko described in some of
his books. All the fields aggregated under Last are guaranteed to come from
the "same" record.


Vanderghast, Access MVP
 
Michel said:
Hi,


Last has it uses, it is the "row"-aggregate Joe Celko described in
some of his books. All the fields aggregated under Last are
guaranteed to come from the "same" record.
Click to expand...

Yes, but First() does that and it seems to me that it is more efiicient to
grab the First arbitrary row than the Last arbitrary row (since in practice
both First and Last are arbitrary).
 
Steve Schapel said:
As I understand it, Rick, they are not arbitrary if you define a sort order.
Click to expand...

It's been a while, but in the testing I did a while back on this it seemed that
when using local Jet tables (recently compacted) that First and Last acted as
one would expect. When using linked tables across a network the results became
much less reliable and if using ODBC linked tables then all bets were off.
 
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