GREATEST & LEAST in BigQuery

Senior Data Engineer • Contractor / Freelancer • GCP & AWS Certified
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Senior Data Engineer • Contractor / Freelancer • GCP & AWS Certified
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Short, practical posts on SQL and BigQuery — from core language features to advanced query patterns. A reference for data practitioners at every level.
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Have you ever had to compute the biggest or smallest value across multiple columns?
If so, note that in addition to using CASE WHEN or IF, we have GREATEST and LEAST, which will do exactly that.
I've also though they reminded me of how MIN / MAX in Excel works.
They also come with the advantage that you can compare multiple values at once.
As usual, pay attention to the NULLs - if one of values is NULL, the result would be as well.

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