SQL MAX of multiple columns?

Question

How do you return 1 value per row of the max of several columns:

TableName

[Number, Date1, Date2, Date3, Cost]

I need to return something like this:

[Number, Most_Recent_Date, Cost]

Query?

Answer 1

This is an old answer and broken in many way.

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/6871572/194653 which has way more upvotes and works with SQL Server 2008+ and handles nulls, etc.

Original but problematic answer:

Well, you can use the CASE expression:

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