I think the point you are missing is a very small one.
The ROWNUMBER is relative to the current result set.

Select Surname from MyTable where Surname like '%Morris%' would start with
RowNumber 0
Select Surname from MyTable where Surname like '%Smith%' would start with
RowNumber 0

Select Surname from MyTable would mean that Morris starts at about 1000 and
Smith at about 1200

See what I mean ? It is just like a RecordCount property would always tell
you how many items in the result, not in the table !



Pete
===
http://www.HowToDoThings.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Ed Malloy <edm@...>
To: <IBDI@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 6:30 AM
Subject: Re: [IBDI] Firebird 1


> Peter,
>
> What am I missing?
>
> How do we know that the records are stored in a certain order?? AFAIK,
> there is no guaranty in SQL that records are stored in any particular
> order; indeed the way I learned, we should NOT trust anything like row
> order.
>
> If I want to access records in the order that they were entered, I just
> access them via the Primary key -- which, on my tables is practically
> always a synthetic variable designed to be nothing but a primary key and
> that is numbered sequentially.
>
> If I wanted .. 20 rows from ... somewhere. Once I establish where
> somewhere is, I can ask for .... BETWEEN :thiskey and :nextkey (where
> nextkey = thiskey + 19)
>
> ed
>
> Peter Morris wrote:
> >
> > > actually, wouldn't returning a rowid be a better option than first(x)
or
> > > whatever, that way the user can include the rowid in the where clause
and
> > do
> > > whatever the hell they want selection wise? select * from blah where
rowid
> > > in (1,3,5,7,9)? I'd think this would be a better option than having it
as
> > an
> > > aggregate style function.
> >
> > I agree 100%.
> > TOP etc are very specific, next thing you know you will have PAGE, LAST,
etc
> > etc and that is not good.
> > As long as the ROWID is the Rownumber of the current selection and is
> > calculated at the end then this would be a brilliant idea.
> >
> > Pete
> > ===
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