I am trying to get the biggest number then pull all the related information based on that number out of the database, here is the code of using:

select d.*, (select max(d2.sale) from data d2) as big from data d where d.sale=big

However tells me does not know what big is, any sugguestions?

Are you using MySQL? Does MySQL support sub-queries in this fashion?

EDIT: Ok, I see now that MySQL does not support sub-queries (cool to know) since v 4.1. Have you run the query in PHPmyAdmin? It gives great errors that contribute to your ability to isolate the problem.

I wondered that myself but I can find no reference to using SQL variables with MySQL

Your select syntax is weird, try this:

 select @max := MAX(sale) from data;

followed by:

 select * from data where sale = @max;

Should work from version 3.23.6 of MySQL upwards