Re: order by

At 10:44 AM 1/1/2004, you wrote:
>I was curious to find out why all the other sorts work the same but order by
>dbms_random.value ( which also returns a number like sqrt (3.14) ) behaves
>totally different. Any ideas ?

When you order by dbms_random, Oracle will generate a random number for each row and sort on those random numbers. When you order by a constant real value, Oracle has no way to order the results, so they will be returned in whatever order they are retrieved from the database.

>Also could you please tell me what does it mean when someone says order by
><non integer some_constant> . An integer constant would refer to the
>positional parameter but what about a real value which is not an integer ?

Aside from SQL brain-teasers, I cannot imagine a practical use for ORDER BY <<constant real number>>.

Justin Cave
Distributed Database Consulting

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