On Mon, 2004-05-03 at 10:39, Boyd E. Hemphill 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?
You are correct. Ordering takes time. Why choose a random column on which to order the results and take additional time when the user didn't ask for it. Here's the proof: create temporary table foo (num int(10)); insert into foo values (1), (2), (3), (4), (5); select * from foo; +------+ | num | +------+ | 1 | | 2 | | 3 | | 4 | | 5 | +------+ 5 rows in set (0.00 sec) delete from foo where num = 3; insert into foo values (6); insert into foo values (3); delete from foo where num = 6; select * from foo; +------+ | num | +------+ | 1 | | 2 | | 4 | | 5 | | 3 | +------+ 5 rows in set (0.00 sec) Garth -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
