When no ‘Order by’ is specified, what order does a query choose for your record set?

by

If you don’t specify an ORDER BY, then there is NO ORDER defined.

The results can be returned in an arbitrary order – and that might change over time, too.

There is no “natural order” or anything like that in a relational database (at least in all that I know of). The only way to get a reliable ordering is by explicitly specifying an ORDER BY clause.

Update: for those who still don’t believe me – here’s two excellent blog posts that illustrate this point (with code samples!) :

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