Get Max Number from Datatable using the Compute method

July 9th, 2008

This is a nifty little thing I came across recently.  I wanted to get the maximum value of a number field from a datatable, and learned about the Datatable’s Compute method.  It’s really easy to use.  The method takes two arguments – an expression argument, which is the aggregate expression you want to use (Count, Max, Sum, etc), and a filter expression, which functions like a SQL WHERE clause.  If you don’t want to filter by anything, you can send Nothing for the second argument (Null in C#).

An example:

Dim expression As String
Dim filter as string
Dim maxNum As Integer

‘get maximum job number from table
expression = “Max(JobNumber)”
filter = “JobDate > 12/31/06 AND JobDate < 1/1/08″
maxNum = CInt(tblJobInfo.Compute(expression, filter))

If you don’t want to filter, it would look like this:

expression = “Max(JobNumber)”
maxNum = CInt(tblJobInfo.Compute(expression, Nothing))

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