How can I find the biggest value in a field of type nvarchar?

I have a field of type nvarchar and length 4. For reasons tied to design, the type must remain as nvarchar.

The data will look something like 0001 and increase to 9999

How can I find the biggest value?

Right now I am going through all the rows programatically, which is inefficient. Is there an sql query that allows me to find the biggest value? Remember the type is nvarchar, and there could be values like 999, thus selecting MAX or ORDER does not work.

Thanks.Try using CAST or CONVERT in your SQL to cast the value to anint datatype before using MAX.|||Yep, that should do.

Thanks for the fast reply.