On 2015-12-21 3:46 PM, lchishol at paradise.net.nz wrote: > Joining the throng, here are my requests: > a) Either an ORDER BY clause/equivalent for GROUP BY, or an assurance that the > kludge of sorting a sub-query first and then grouping the result does and will > continue to work - I need this functionality.
You need what to work exactly? SQL tables are unordered by definition, and ORDER BY is more of a display attribute at the end. If you want to do something order-sensitive in the middle of a query then RANK is the proper generalized way to do it that SQL provides, that or, where applicable, order-insensitive aggregates like min/max/etc which still tell you what value you'd get first if you sorted a list without actually sorting it. > c) A vote for RANK, but I'm doing that in my application at present, post-SQL > but before printing. I know you can generate 1,2,3=,3=,5 type sequences from > self-joins but it seems a lot easier to do it in Delphi! I agree with adding RANK, it is very useful. -- Darren Duncan
