A couple of years ago, John Sansom wrote a blog post comparing the performance of two different ways to get the maximum value from a column: MAX() and TOP (1). http://www.johnsansom.com/performance-comparison-of-select-top-1-verses-max/ In the conclusion, he states:  When a clustered index is present on the table & ...

I have made updates to my tool for automating SQL Server query exec stats, index usage, execution plan analysis. So I would like people to give it a try and send feedback. If there is an error, please report the file and line number (the top level is sufficient). download at http://www.qdpma.com/tools/ExecStats.zip (check ...