title: Returning the Maximum of Date1 and Date2 in Cognos 10.2
body: <p>At my company we've recently moved from SSRS to a Cognos-based Reporting System, I don't have much experience with Cognos as a whole and am running into some issues that seem trivially easy to fix but I am struggling so far.</p>
  
  <p>In our DB we segregate two kinds of contact date information [Date Emailed] and [Date Called], I'm attempting to combine both to get a [Date Contacted] field returned.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way for me in Cognos report builder to find the max of both of these data items?<br>
  I would have expected some kind of "c = MAX(a,b)" function like the below to be available but from what I've seen, apparently not.</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>[Date Contacted] = MAX([Date Emailed], [Date Called])  </p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>Also, we have no access to modify SQL or any Cognos related part except the Report Builder which makes this all the more fun.</p>
  
  <p>I feel like the answer will be building a CASE statement to do this, but I'd rather stay away from CASE if I can.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,<br>
  Blu</p>