OK, then.
The sub-select needs to go.
Thanks for helpful advice.
Kevin
--- On Sun, 9/26/10, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
> Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Preserving order through an inner join
> To: "Kevin Jardine" <kevinjardine@yahoo.com>
> Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Date: Sunday, September 26, 2010, 9:37 PM
> Kevin Jardine <kevinjardine@yahoo.com>
> writes:
> > I have a query structured like this:
> > SELECT stuff FROM
> > (SELECT more stuff FROM
> > table1
> > ORDER BY field1) AS q1
> > INNER JOIN table2 ON ( ... )
>
> > and have found that the INNER JOIN is ignoring the
> order set for q1.
>
> > The final results are not ordered by field1.
>
> Indeed. Many of the possible join techniques won't
> preserve that ordering.
>
> > This works for other databases (eg. MySQL and
> Sqllite3) but not PostgreSQL.
>
> It might sometimes accidentally fail to fail, but I think
> you'll find
> that there are *no* SQL databases where this is guaranteed
> to work the
> way you expect. The SQL standard explicitly disavows
> any particular
> output row order unless there is a top-level ORDER
> BY. (In fact,
> unless things have changed recently an ORDER BY in a
> sub-select isn't
> even legal per spec.)
>
> > I can make some small changes to the query structure
> as long as it works for the other DBs as well. Moving the
> ORDER BY outside q1 would be a large amount of work, however
> (these queries are generated by a program), so I am hoping
> that there is a simpler solution.
>
> Nope, that's what you need to do.
>
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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