Hello. I've recently begun to use PostgreSQL in earnest (working with data as opposed to just having clever applications tuck it away in there) and have hit a wall with something.

I'm trying to build a query that among other things, returns the minimum and maximum values contained in either of two columns. The problem is that min() and max() only take one column name as an argument. Is there some clever way that I can craft an expression to find the min/max across both columns? I have yet to delve into any pgsql so if it requires that, then please go easy on me. :)

Example:

id | columnA | columnB
1 | 4 | 2
2 | 3 | 4
2 | 5 | 1


I'd like to be able to discover that 1 is the smallest value in either columnA or columnB and 5 is the largest. I don't actually care what rows they are in, I just want the values.

Thanks for your time! Any help or pointers to relevant reading material on this would be greatly appreciated. (I have been using the excellent PostgreSQL docs and an equally good book titled Beginning Databases with PostgreSQL by Neil Matthew and Richard Stones so far.)

--
Amos

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