Re: sql limitation?

On Sun, 04 Nov 2001 03:34:55 GMT, "Jim Kennedy" <kennedy-family_at_home.com> wrote:

>Bob is correct. However, what Emmanuel might mean is I want the salesman
>with the 10th highest commission last month type of query.
>Jim
>(snip)<

That's different ... and who knows where that salesman might reside *within the table*, especially if there are more selection criteria (i.e. "last month")? The question was specific about selecting the 10th row from a table.

The trouble is, usually, that developers with no relational experience tend to rely on the natural (physical) order of records in storage because that's how they are used to manipulating flat files. It might even work for awhile, but they need to know that it's dangerous to do this in a RDBMS.

Of course, it's often necessary to select the Nth elementin an ordered set, so the next step will be for the OP to ask "so how is this done relationally"?

Bob Hairgrove
rhairgroveNoSpam_at_Pleasebigfoot.com Received on Sun Nov 04 2001 - 11:51:37 CET