Subject LIST gives inconsistent results
Author Daniel Miller
It's certainly possible my database is corrupted - I don't think it is.  But I'm willing to test if someone tells me how.  However...

At the moment, after several painful hours, I think I've determined the following:

CREATE TABLE NODES
(
  NODE smallint NOT NULL,
  ROUTE_UPDATED timestamp,
  CONSTRAINT PK_NODES PRIMARY KEY (NODE)
);

CREATE TABLE ROUTES
(
  NODE smallint NOT NULL,
  ROUTE_INDEX smallint NOT NULL,
  LINK_NODE smallint NOT NULL,
  QUALITY smallint,
  CONSTRAINT PK_ROUTES PRIMARY KEY (NODE,ROUTE_INDEX)
);

Entries in table ROUTES are inserted in primary key order - as well as sorted by primary key. So via both "raw & natural" order and an active ORDER BY it shouldn't be that difficult to have a sorted list of routes!

if I do:
select R.NODE, list(R.ROUTE_INDEX||R.LINK_NODE||R.QUALITY) LISTED_ROUTE
    from ROUTES R
    group by R.NODE

I get a computed column that is properly sorted. I don't even need to specify an ORDER BY.  But...

select N.NODE, list(ROUTE_INDEX||LINK_NODE||QUALITY) LISTED_ROUTE
    from NODES N
    join (select R.NODE, R.ROUTE_INDEX, R.LINK_NODE, R.QUALITY from ROUTES R order by R.NODE,R.ROUTE_INDEX) using (NODE)
    group by N.NODE

Even though I'm explicitly sorting the source derived table for the LIST - I get a set of results that seems almost random. Absolutely maddening.
--
Daniel