Mighty testy for someone who is asking for ...

1) if there is no DATE field (either some date/time datatype OR a
char/varchar field with date data) then show table status. BTW, most
other database engines require auditing or a date field to determine
last update times. You got lucky here....

2) methods of finding maximum values
select max(datefieldnamehere) from table;
select max(cast(char_datefieldnamehere as date)) from table;

Again, see No 1 if these do not apply.