How to select the last record from a mysql table

Anon

As you might understand form the subject, I'm having a little problem with
selecting the last record from a table.

I have a mysql database with a table which contains a column 'date' now I want to retrieve the value of of 'date' from the latest record in the table.

I know it's more a kind of MySQL question but maybe you know how to get going
with this.

Robbert-Jan

Anon

select * from table order by datefield desc limit 1;

The "order by ... desc" puts it in latest-date-first order;
"limit 1" restricts it to a single row only.

Anon

i know this works in oracle but can't say for sure about MySQL. it may or may not be more efficient, probablly not since it's a subquery, but might be worth checking the execution times if it's important.

select * from table where datefield = (select max(datefield) from table);

Kirk's solution is probablly the optimal one (and the first one I would have suggested) but if you're interested (and it works in MySQL), you might try running some performance tests with both queries.