Eric,

I don't know about such a requirement either, it's just what i am used
to. It feels awkward in a client application, if the order of items
changes with every refresh. I don't like to add artificial (=without a
functional requirement) sorting to my queries just to inhibit the
"toggling".
Could maybe someone from the H2 developers comment on this?

Thanks,
Remo

On Feb 9, 4:22 pm, Eric Faulhaber <[email protected]> wrote:
> Remo,
>
> AFAIK, there is no formal requirement for an undefined sort to be
> stable/deterministic across query executions.  On occasion, I have
> witnessed what you are describing, but I would not consider this a bug,
> even though it may be different than other database implementations.
>
> Regards,
> Eric
>
> Remo wrote:
> > Eric,
>
> > I completely agree that the order is not defined in my case. But in
> > accordance with other DBMS (HSQLDB, MySql) I ran the query, I expect
> > the order to be deterministic.
> > I tried to demonstrate the effect with a small test case, but did not
> > succeed, as it always worked as expected. So I still assume that a bug
> > causes this behavior in some rare cases.
>
> > Regards,
> > Remo
>
> > On Feb 8, 6:11 pm, Eric Faulhaber <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >> Remo,
>
> >> If all of the records in the table have the same values for the
> >> columns in your ORDER BY clause, you effectively are not telling the
> >> database how you want your results to be sorted, so the order in which
> >> you get your results back is undefined.  There is no guarantee or
> >> requirement that results will come back in the same order every time
> >> you execute the same query, beyond what you specify in your ORDER BY
> >> clause.
>
> >> If you expect to see your results in the same order every time you run
> >> your query, you will need to sort explicitly on some unique constraint
> >> as the least significant criterion in your ORDER BY clause.  If your
> >> table has a primary key, that's a good candidate.  The resulting sort
> >> order may not have business meaning, but it will be stable as long as
> >> records are not added, changed, or deleted from the table between
> >> query runs.
>
> >> Regards,
> >> Eric Faulhaber
>
> >> On Feb 8, 11:13 am, Remo <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >>> I encountered a query where the sort order is correct, but not stable,
> >>> i.e. not every run of the query returns the rows in the same order.
> >>> Unfortunately, I was not able to create a simple test case. The query
> >>> is:
>
> >>> SELECT
> >>> NOON_REPORT_FIELD_INST.INSTALLATION_ID,
> >>> NOON_REPORT_FIELD_INST.NOON_REPORT_FIELD_ID,
> >>> NOON_REPORT_FIELD.SORT_POSITION
> >>> FROM NOON_REPORT_FIELD_INST
> >>> JOIN NOON_REPORT_FIELD ON NOON_REPORT_FIELD_INST.NOON_REPORT_FIELD_ID
> >>> = NOON_REPORT_FIELD.NOON_REPORT_FIELD_ID
> >>> ORDER BY NOON_REPORT_FIELD_INST.INSTALLATION_ID,
> >>> NOON_REPORT_FIELD.SORT_POSITION
>
> >>> It might help to know, that INSTALLATION_ID is the same for all rows
> >>> and SORT_POSITION is NULL for all rows.
> >>> I will provide the DB with data if necessary for further analysis.
>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>> Remo

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