Compares two or more values and returns the largest value.

Syntax

MAXIMUM ( expression , expression [ , expression ] ... )
expression
A constant, field name, variable name, or expression. If there is a mixture of decimal and integer data types, decimal type is returned.

Example

In this procedure, if the CreditLimit value is under 20,000, the procedure adds 10,000 to that value. Otherwise, the procedure sets CreditLimit to 30,000. The MAXIMUM function determines the greater of the original CreditLimit value and the new cred-lim2 value.

r-maxmum.p 

DEFINE VARIABLE cred-lim2 AS DECIMAL NO-UNDO FORMAT ">>,>>9.99".

FOR EACH Customer NO-LOCK:
  cred-lim2 = IF Customer.CreditLimit < 20000 THEN
    Customer.CreditLimit + 10000 ELSE 30000.
  DISPLAY Customer.CreditLimit cred-lim2
    MAXIMUM(cred-lim2, Customer.CreditLimit) 
      LABEL "Maximum of these two values".
END.

Notes

  • When comparing character values, if at least one of the character fields is defined as case sensitive, then MAXIMUM treats all of the values as case sensitive for the sake of the comparisons. If none of the values is case sensitive, MAXIMUM treats lowercase letters as if they were uppercase letters.
  • You cannot compare data of different DATE, DATETIME, and DATETIME-TZ data types to each other using MAXIMUM. You must first convert different date and datetime data types to the same data type before doing a comparison between them.

See also

MINIMUM function