Treat Null as Max

Question

So if I had a table in my database with the values

1
2
3
4
NULL

And I executed the query

SELECT MAX(col1) FROM <table>

I'd get 4. Is there any way to change this so Null would be treated as the maximum as oppose to the minimum?

Thanks!

Answer 1

SELECT MAX(ISNULL(col1, 2147483647)) FROM <table> 

[2147483647 = 2^31 - 1]

Answer 2

Just as a variant, you can do this on Oracle.

SELECT *
  FROM ( SELECT col1 
           FROM <table>
          ORDER BY col1 DESC NULLS FIRST
       )
 WHERE rownum = 1

(OP hasn't specified any particular flavour of database)