Yeah, the question is overly complicated, and the answer is overly simple. The POWER() function is totally unneccessary, its fairly obvious from the WHERE clause that there's only going to be one row result. Not to mention the WHERE clause is redundant, as both branches will select the master database and only that database.

Really, I don't think it's a good question. It's complicated apparently just for the sake of being complicated. Save for learning that the database_id of the master database is always 1, no one will really actually bring anything away from this question.

--J