title: Select only specific fields in Magento
body: <p>I'm trying to use the MAX function of MySQL to retrieve the latest dates from my table. </p>
  
  <pre><code>$_updates = Mage::getModel('ticket/updates')-&gt;getCollection();  
  $_updates-&gt;getSelect()-&gt;columns('MAX(created) as max_created')-&gt;group(array('status_id'));
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is the resulting query:</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT `main_table`.*, MAX(created) AS `max_created` FROM `em_ticket_updates` AS `main_table` GROUP BY `status_id` 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem with this is that if all the fields are included (<code>main_table.*</code>)  it does not function correctly.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to remove <code>main_table.*</code> from the query and only use specific fields?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>