### 3.6.2 The Row Holding the Maximum of a Certain Column

*Task: Find the number, dealer, and price of the most expensive article.*

 This is easily done with a subquery:

```
SELECT article, dealer, price
FROM   shop
WHERE  price=(SELECT MAX(price) FROM shop);

+---------+--------+-------+
| article | dealer | price |
+---------+--------+-------+
|    0004 | D      | 19.95 |
+---------+--------+-------+
```

 Another solution is to use a `LEFT JOIN`, as shown here:

```
SELECT s1.article, s1.dealer, s1.price
FROM shop s1
LEFT JOIN shop s2 ON s1.price < s2.price
WHERE s2.article IS NULL;
```

 You can also do this by sorting all rows descending by price and get only the first row using the MySQL-specific `LIMIT` clause, like this:

```
SELECT article, dealer, price
FROM shop
ORDER BY price DESC
LIMIT 1;
```

Note

 If there were several most expensive articles, each with a price of 19.95, the `LIMIT` solution would show only one of them.

