Selecting a Record With MAX Value

Question

In SQL Server 2008 I have a table CUSTOMERS that has two columns as:

ID, BALANCE

How can I write the query that selects the ID of the customer who has maximum balance, "in the most effective way"?

Option 1: ORDER BY BALANCE and SELECT TOP(1) --> costs too much.

Option 2: Firstly Get MAX amount, then make another query that uses the amount in where clause --> costs too much and not seem reliable.

Answer 1

Note: An incorrect revision of this answer was edited out. Please review all answers.

A subselect in the WHERE clause to retrieve the greatest BALANCE aggregated over all rows. If multiple ID values share that balance value, all would be returned.

SELECT    ID,   BALANCE FROM CUSTOMERS WHERE BALANCE = (SELECT MAX(BALANCE) FROM CUSTOMERS) 

Answer 2

Here's an option if you have multiple records for each Customer and are looking for the latest balance for each (say they are dated records):

SELECT ID, BALANCE FROM (     SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY ID ORDER BY DateModified DESC) as RowNum, ID, BALANCE     FROM CUSTOMERS ) C WHERE RowNum = 1