Posted by Russ Rose on 12/20/06 01:29

"Greg D. Moore (Strider)" <mooregr_deleteth1s@greenms.com> wrote in message
news:O6Rhh.914$yx6.162@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
>
> "Russ Rose" <russrose@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:rIKdnRRxk8OS2BrYnZ2dnUVZ_s-rnZ2d@comcast.com...
>>>
>>> SQL has one data structure, tables.
>>
>> And indexes are what exactly?
>
> An index, not a data structure.

You are saying it neither has structure nor data?

What value would a "covering" index be if that were true?

>>
>>>
>>> Tables are not ordered.
>>
>> Even clustered ones?
>
> Not even clustered ones.
>
> The engine is free to return data in whatever order it wishes.

Order of return has nothing to do with the physical order of a table. If
your statement were 'views (or cursors) have no intrinsic order' I might
agree with you, but your statement that clustered tables are not ordered is
false.

>
> In theory if you did a select * from FOO and it already had the last 100
> records physically stored last in cache it could return those before
> returning the rest.
>

True, if the compiler ignores the order by in the view, which it does not if
the TOP statement is included.

>
>>
>>>
>>> Therefor the fact that SQL 2000 allowed the above syntax is basically
>>> "wrong".
>>
>> Yet it works...
>
> In SQL 2000. But not SQL 2005 or presumably later versions.
>
>

Have I claimed otherwise?

[Back to original message]