Min and Max date between five tables

[thechazm]

I am looking for some advice on the proper way to figure out the earliest date and the latest date between five tables.

I know I can do this by creating a query for each table only pulling out the date field in each then using a union query to put it in one dataset then run a query to return the earliest date and latest date but I was curious if anyone had any better idea's to reduce the number of queries needed to be ran with my idea.

Thanks,

TheChazm

 

[pbaldy]

If you're trying to compare across tables, they might not be normalized (data should probably be in one table). In any case, this may help if you can join them appropriately:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;209857

 

[thechazm]

Thanks for the suggestion pbaldy. I did think about using some code to do this but there is over 100K of records between the five tables that gets completly updated every day. It would take the code to long to process the data I would guess.

The data itself is time charges broken into multiple tables due to the differences in the actual data. The reason why I need to find out Min and Max dates of the five tables is for the normalization process that it does on the raw data that it's importing so the normalization of the data does not take too long since I can make all the queries and code work within the two dates calculated.

Again thanks for that but ultimatly I believe I am looking for something different due to the amount of data.

 

[thechazm]

You know what I think I may just bulk it into one table at least during the import phase so I could potentially make this a lot easier. I appreciate the comment I just couldn't talk myself into rework on the design but it looks like it's my only real option

Thanks for setting me straight.