On Mon, 3 May 2004 12:39:48 -0500 "Boyd E. Hemphill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> My boss says that if you do a select statement against a table the > result set always comes back in the same order. I say that this is > a myth and that the result is random, except when some ordering is > specified in the SQL statement. > > Who is right? Is this behavior specified by ANSI or ISO? I believe that the relation database model specifies that the order of rows is not important in the resulting relation produced from a relational operation (Select, Project, Union, Join, etc.). Whether or not you actually get the same order on the same SELECT query run multiple times depends on the DBMS you are using. I think different DBMS's may do things in idle time to optimize table layout and perhaps re-order the data, I'm not sure about MySQL. Conceptually as an end-user, you should never assume that the DBMS will always return your data in the same order regardless of how/where it is physically stored, that's the job of the ORDER BY clause in a SELECT query. The DBMS is supposed to abstract away the details of the physical storage implementation, so when order is important, every query should have an ORDER BY to guaruntee the sort order, especially if you want to port the application. Josh -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
