From: Boyd E. Hemphill [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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? >From what I understand (as I've heard this explained a half dozen times by different >people), the results are returned in the order they appear on disk. This can change >via any number of factors (such as a disk defrag), though, so you should never rely >on getting results back in the same order every time if you're not using an ORDER BY >clause. For the most part, though, results /will/ appear to come back in the same order. I imagine that's what your boss is talking about. It's definitely not to be relied on, though. If this is documented online, I've yet to see it (though I haven't exactly gone looking for it). Someone else may have a more accurate description of the way it's done, though. -- Mike Johnson Web Developer Smarter Living, Inc. phone (617) 886-5539 -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
