Re: how to find "bottom" of table in a group query

Christopher,

I've always been very uncomfortable with naming indexes in a hint - especially in a query which depends on using the correct index with the descending hint. The idea that an application could suddenly produce seriously defective results because an index has been dropped, or rebuilt with a changed name is very chilling.

Do you know if there are any thoughts
within Oracle of making such hints use index descriptions (e.g. bracketed column lists) instead of names - or any plans to make the hint produce a run-time error if a
named index does not exist ?

--
Jonathan Lewis
Yet another Oracle-related web site: www.jlcomp.demon.co.uk

I have a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye cannot sea

I've run this poem threw it
I'm shore your pleased to no
Its letter perfect in it's weigh
My chequer tolled me so

Christopher Beck wrote in message
<36dd950a.32148016_at_inet16.us.oracle.com>...
>On Wed, 03 Mar 1999 14:10:17 +0200, Werner
<werner.smit_at_face.co.zackityspam>
>wrote:
>
>SQL> select /*+ INDEX_DESC( emp hiredate_idx ) */
> 2 ename, to_char( hiredate, 'dd-mon-yyyy hh24:mi:ss' )
> 3 from emp
> 4 where hiredate > to_date( '01-JAN-0001', 'dd-mon-yyyy' )
> 5 and rownum < 6
> 6 /
>
Received on Wed Mar 03 1999 - 16:25:09 CST