title: Find most recent date in a table using HIVE
body: <p>I just need to make a simple query of a table on a MapR cluster in that I want to know what the date is of the most recent record in the table.  Dates are in a 'report_date' column in string format.  I tried the following query without success:</p>
  
  <p>select max(report_date) from partition.table_name </p>
  
  <p>I know the second part of the statement works.  Is there something wrong with the first part?  </p>
  
  <p>Thanks, 
  A</p>