Scalar Function cause all sorts of performance issues, so its better to wrap the logic into an Inline Table Valued Function if possible. This is the function I used to replace some User Defined Functions which selected the Min/Max dates from a list of upto ten dates. When tested on my dataset of 1 Million rows the Scalar Function took over 15 minutes before I killed the query the Inline TVF took 1 minute which is the same amount of time as selecting the resultset into a temporary table. To use this call the function from either a subquery in the the SELECT or a CROSS APPLY.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.Get_Min_Max_Date
(
    @Date1  datetime,
    @Date2  datetime,
    @Date3  datetime,
    @Date4  datetime,
    @Date5  datetime,
    @Date6  datetime,
    @Date7  datetime,
    @Date8  datetime,
    @Date9  datetime,
    @Date10 datetime
)
RETURNS TABLE
AS
RETURN
(
    SELECT      Max(DateValue)  Max_Date,
                Min(DateValue)  Min_Date
    FROM        (
                    VALUES  (@Date1),
                            (@Date2),
                            (@Date3),
                            (@Date4),
                            (@Date5),
                            (@Date6),
                            (@Date7),
                            (@Date8),
                            (@Date9),
                            (@Date10)
                )   AS Dates(DateValue)
)

使用CROSS APPLY (2005+) ....

SELECT MostRecentDate 
FROM SourceTable
    CROSS APPLY (SELECT MAX(d) MostRecentDate FROM (VALUES (Date1), (Date2), (Date3)) AS a(d)) md

这是一个古老的答案，在很多方面都有问题。

请参阅https://stackoverflow.com/a/6871572/194653，它有更多的赞，与sql server 2008+一起工作，并处理空值等。

原创但有问题的答案:

你可以使用CASE语句:

SELECT
    CASE
        WHEN Date1 >= Date2 AND Date1 >= Date3 THEN Date1
        WHEN Date2 >= Date1 AND Date2 >= Date3 THEN Date2
        WHEN Date3 >= Date1 AND Date3 >= Date2 THEN Date3
        ELSE                                        Date1
    END AS MostRecentDate

以下两个示例中的任何一个都可以工作:

SELECT  MAX(date_columns) AS max_date
FROM    ( (SELECT   date1 AS date_columns
           FROM     data_table         )
          UNION
          ( SELECT  date2 AS date_columns
            FROM    data_table
          )
          UNION
          ( SELECT  date3 AS date_columns
            FROM    data_table
          )
        ) AS date_query

第二个是对拉塞夫克的答案的补充。

SELECT  MAX(MostRecentDate)
FROM    ( SELECT    CASE WHEN date1 >= date2
                              AND date1 >= date3 THEN date1
                         WHEN date2 >= date1
                              AND date2 >= date3 THEN date2
                         WHEN date3 >= date1
                              AND date3 >= date2 THEN date3
                         ELSE date1
                    END AS MostRecentDate
          FROM      data_table
        ) AS date_query 

如果你正在使用MySQL或PostgreSQL或Oracle或BigQuery，你可以使用

SELECT GREATEST(col1, col2 ...) FROM table

如果您正在使用SQL Server 2005，您可以使用UNPIVOT特性。下面是一个完整的例子:

create table dates 
(
  number int,
  date1 datetime,
  date2 datetime,
  date3 datetime 
)

insert into dates values (1, '1/1/2008', '2/4/2008', '3/1/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/2/2008', '2/3/2008', '3/3/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/3/2008', '2/2/2008', '3/2/2008')
insert into dates values (1, '1/4/2008', '2/1/2008', '3/4/2008')

select max(dateMaxes)
from (
  select 
    (select max(date1) from dates) date1max, 
    (select max(date2) from dates) date2max,
    (select max(date3) from dates) date3max
) myTable
unpivot (dateMaxes For fieldName In (date1max, date2max, date3max)) as tblPivot

drop table dates