Retrieving the highest value from list

Question

My question is regarding retrieving a value from a sharepoint list. Basically I have a list with some data. One of the fields in the list is a text field with numbers.

So what i want to do, i want to retrieve the highest number from that field ... how can i do that most practical and with best approach?

This will be done programmatically.

Of course i couuld do a loop through all the items, but i would like to avoid looping, is there a better way?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Programatically use SPQuery and in your caml query use the OrderBy Node

eg:

<Query><OrderBy><FieldRef Name="yourcolumn" Ascending="True" /></OrderBy></Query>

You can also set the RowLimit property of SPQuery to 1 to make it more efficient

Hope this helps

UPDATE: As Nadeem Yousuf mentioned on another answer, this will not work with a text field, so might need to consider changing the type of this column (if possible?)

Answer 2

Had the field in question been a Number field, I would have done Order By desc on that and put the RowLimit of SPQuery to 1. But I am not sure whether Ordery By clause will work here as yours is a text field containing numbers.