This question is for almost a year ago, nut probably someone can find it useful.
You need to CONVERT
your string to DATE
format and use a ROW_NUMBER
function to window your result set.
Create table
DECLARE @tbl TABLE(Id INT, myDate VARCHAR(8))
Sample data
INSERT @tbl
SELECT 1 , '01302014' UNION ALL
SELECT 1 , '04222014' UNION ALL
SELECT 2 , '01302014'
Query
;WITH C AS(
SELECT ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY Id ORDER BY CONVERT(DATETIME, (SUBSTRING(myDate, 5, 4) + '.' + SUBSTRING(myDate, 1, 2) + '.' + SUBSTRING(myDate, 3, 2)), 101) DESC) AS Rn
,Id
,CAST(CONVERT(DATETIME, (SUBSTRING(myDate, 5, 4) + '.' + SUBSTRING(myDate, 1, 2) + '.' + SUBSTRING(myDate, 3, 2)), 101) AS DATE) AS myDate
FROM @tbl
)
SELECT Id, myDate
FROM C
WHERE Rn = 1