Find max value and show corresponding value from different field in SQL server

Question

I have a table with data about cities that includes their name, population and other fields irrelevant to my question.

ID      Name    Population 1       A       45667    2       B       123456   3       C       3005     4       D       13769    

To find the max population is basic, but I need a resulting table that has the max population in one column, and the corresponding city's name in another column

Population      Name     123456          B        

I've looked through similar questions, but for some reason the answers look over-complicated. Is there a way to write the query in 1 or 2 lines?

Answer 1

There are several ways that this can be done:

A filter in the WHERE clause:

select id, name, population from yourtable where population in (select max(population)                      from yourtable) 

Or a subquery:

select id, name, population from yourtable t1 inner join (   select max(population) MaxPop   from yourtable ) t2   on t1.population = t2.maxpop; 

Or you can use TOP WITH TIES. If there can be no ties, then you can remove the with ties. This will include any rows that have the same population value:

select top 1 with ties id, name, population from yourtable order by population desc 

Since you are using SQL Server you can also use ranking functions to get the result:

select id, name, population from (   select id, name, population,     row_number() over(order by population desc) rn   from yourtable ) src where rn = 1 

See SQL Fiddle with Demo of all.

As a side note on the ranking function, you might want to use dense_rank() instead of row_number(). Then in the event you have more than one city with the same population you will get both city names. (See Demo)