Select highest date from 2 tables.

[Kold]

Hi.

I am having some problems with some non-normalised tables (that I cannot do anything about). Basically, there is some data stored in 'table1' with a timestamp 'Date_Entered' this can be updated, but the update time is stored in a second table containing the ID of the data in table1 that was updated, the user to update it, and the timestamp it was updated.

I need to get the data from 'table1' and order it by timestamp. HOWEVER, if the corresponding time field in 'table2' is higher (it has been edited) the newest date must be used instead.

table1

ID
Date_Entered
Name

Email

table2

Edit_ID
Edit_Time

Edit_User

I hope you understand what I need to do, basically I need to order table1 from the most recent date from table 1 or 2.

Is this possible using a query (mySQL) or will I need to use a number of queries and sort them using code (PHP)?

Thank you for your time!
K.

[harmor]

$getdate = mysql_query("
SELECT t1.Date_Entered AS Date_Entered, t2.Edit_Time AS Edit_Time
FROM table1 AS t1 
LEFT JOIN table2 AS t2
ON t1.Date_Entered = t2.Edit_time ");
$date = mysql_fetch_array($getdate);

if($date['Date_Entered'] == $date['Edit_Time'])
{
   echo "The user didn't edit the time";
}
else
{
  echo "The user did edit the time";
}

This is untested