MIN and MAX strange results

I want to get the MIN and MAX value of a table column from a specified period of time. I execute a query and it return the result. The problem is that the values returned by MIN and MAX are not always correct!!

This is the result table

Date Statement From To

1 2007-01-03 00:00:00 Invoice 1 2 Correct
2 2007-01-04 00:00:00 Receipt 1 1 Correct
3 2007-01-04 00:00:00 Invoice 10 9 Wrong
4 2007-01-05 00:00:00 Receipt 2 5 Correct
5 2007-01-05 00:00:00 Invoice 100 99 Wrong
6 2007-01-08 00:00:00 Invoice 124 175 Correct
7 2007-01-09 00:00:00 Invoice 176 224 Correct
8 2007-01-10 00:00:00 Invoice 225 265 Correct

From =From Statement Number

To= To statement Number

The odd behavior happens when the number of digits changes. If the range of the column is 1 digit ie from 0 to 9 the values reported are ok. If the digits change then there is a problem as in line 3 and 5.

Any ideas why this odd behavior happens?

rectis:

I think you need to provide (1) the SQL Statement that is not working correctly and the definition of the table (or at least the relevant columns). My knee-jerk guess would be that you are coming to grief because your "From" and "To" fields are defined as varchar instead of numeric (or integer).

If in fact your "from" and "to" fields are defined as varchar you first need to make a determination to the usage of these fields -- that is see if the definition needs to be modified such that columns are reformatted into numeric (or integer) columns. You may need to compute your max as MIN(CONVERT(INTEGER, FROM)) and MAX(CONVERT(INTEGER,TO))

|||You are right. Thank you very much. I think my brain was stopped.The field was defined as varchar. Now the values are ok!