Обсуждение: Order by not working

Hello,

I am using "PostgreSQL 9.6.5 on x86_64-apple-darwin, compiled by i686-apple-darwin11-llvm-gcc-4.2 (GCC) 4.2.1 (Based on
AppleInc. build 5658) (LLVM build 2336.11.00), 64-bit" 

I am having trouble with a create select statement’s order by clause. The input table, “household_complete_data", (1st
10rows) looks like this (data hidden for privacy): 

household_name,    first_name,    street_address,    city,        state,    zip,        home_phone,    home_email,
cell,       personal_email_primary,    personal_email_secondary 

"Armstrong”        "xxxx”        "xxxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx"
"Armstrong”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx"        "xxxx”
    "xxxx" 
"Bauer”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    “xxxx”        “xxxx"
"Bauer”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”
    "xxxx" 
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx"
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx"
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx"
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”
    "xxxx" 
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx”        "xxxx"        “xxxx”
    "xxxx" 
"Berst”            "xxxx”        "xxxx”        "xxxx”    "xxxx”    "xxxx2”        xxxx”                “xxxx"

To this table I apply the following SQL statement:

CREATE TABLE "household_data" AS
SELECT household_name,
string_agg(household_complete_data.first_name, ', ') AS family_list,
street_address, city, state, zip,
string_agg(COALESCE(household_complete_data.home_phone, '') || ',' ||     COALESCE(household_complete_data.cell, ''),
',')AS phone_list,  
string_agg(COALESCE(household_complete_data.home_email, '') || ',' ||
COALESCE(household_complete_data.personal_email_primary,'') || ',' ||
COALESCE(household_complete_data.personal_email_secondary,''), ',') AS email_list 
FROM "household_complete_data"
GROUP BY household_name, street_address, city, state, zip
ORDER BY household_name;

The result is (only the first column is shown):

household_name

"Garcia"
"Armstrong"
"Armstrong"
"Bauer"
"Bauer"
"Berst"
"Berst"
"Minch (xxxx)"
"Berst"
“Besel"

The ORDER BY clause doesn’t seem to work properly (note: “Minch (xxxx)” is an entry for the household name that has the
firstname in parentheses). All through the table there are random insertions of rows that are out of order with respect
tothe household_name. This has me stumped. Can anyone give me a hint of what might be going wrong? 

Regards,

Dan Nessett

Not sure how you select the household

>
> The result is (only the first column is shown):
>
> household_name
>
> "Garcia"
> "Armstrong"
> "Armstrong"
> "Bauer"
> "Bauer"
> "Berst"
> "Berst"
> "Minch (xxxx)"
> "Berst"
> “Besel”


but unless you select from the resulting table using again an order by, the rows will be returned in an undetermined
order.Such is the nature of the relational model - there is no order you can rely on when selecting, unless you specify
it

Hth,

Peter

Thanks Peter. The listing of the result is from pg-admin 4.30 using view/edit data applied to the household_data table.
Inthe past this has always returned the table contents in the ORDR BY sort order. Do I need to specify some preference
inpg_admin to guarantee this? 

Dan

> On Feb 16, 2021, at 11:34 AM, Peter Coppens <peter.coppens@datylon.com> wrote:
>
> Not sure how you select the household
>
>>
>> The result is (only the first column is shown):
>>
>> household_name
>>
>> "Garcia"
>> "Armstrong"
>> "Armstrong"
>> "Bauer"
>> "Bauer"
>> "Berst"
>> "Berst"
>> "Minch (xxxx)"
>> "Berst"
>> “Besel”
>
>
> but unless you select from the resulting table using again an order by, the rows will be returned in an undetermined
order.Such is the nature of the relational model - there is no order you can rely on when selecting, unless you specify
it
>
> Hth,
>
> Peter
>

Thanks Peter. The listing of the result is from pg-admin 4.30 using view/edit data applied to the household_data table. In the past this has always returned the table contents in the ORDR BY sort order. Do I need to specify some preference in pg_admin to guarantee this?

Dan

On Feb 16, 2021, at 11:34 AM, Peter Coppens <peter.coppens@datylon.com> wrote:

Not sure how you select the household

The result is (only the first column is shown):

household_name

"Garcia"
"Armstrong"
"Armstrong"
"Bauer"
"Bauer"
"Berst"
"Berst"
"Minch (xxxx)"
"Berst"
“Besel”

but unless you select from the resulting table using again an order by, the rows will be returned in an undetermined order. Such is the nature of the relational model - there is no order you can rely on when selecting, unless you specify it

Hth,

Peter

Thanks Peter. The listing of the result is from pg-admin 4.30 using view/edit data applied to the household_data table. In the past this has always returned the table contents in the ORDR BY sort order. Do I need to specify some preference in pg_admin to guarantee this?

Thanks to those who responded. I have solved my problem by noting the advice to use a select with order by. In particular, I need to export the data to a csv file anyway, so I use the following copy command:

COPY (SELECT household_name, family_list, street_address, city, state, zip, phone_list, email_list

    FROM "household_data" 

    ORDER BY household_name

    )

TO '/tmp/household_data.csv'

WITH (FORMAT CSV, HEADER);

This works.

Regards,

Dan

On Feb 16, 2021, at 12:35 PM, David G. Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, February 16, 2021, Dan Nessett <dnessett@yahoo.com> wrote:

Thanks Peter. The listing of the result is from pg-admin 4.30 using view/edit data applied to the household_data table. In the past this has always returned the table contents in the ORDR BY sort order. Do I need to specify some preference in pg_admin to guarantee this?

pgAdmin4 might be keying off of the presence of an index, which this table doesn’t have.

David J.

On Tue, 2021-02-16 at 16:11 -0600, Ron wrote:
> SQL is only intuitive to people who've done programming... :)

SQL is quite counter-intuitive to people who have only done
procedural programming.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe
-- 
Cybertec | https://www.cybertec-postgresql.com