Get entries in order they were inserted without a primary key?

Question

I am wondering if it is possible to query any database entries in order they were inserted without a primary key?

Is there a specification in the SQL which order the entries have on a query like this:

SELECT *
FROM tbl
LIMIT 5

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

3

There is not. There is no way to guarantee the row order of the records. You must use ORDER BY.

See MySQL row order for "SELECT * FROM table_name;"

edited May 23 '17 at 12:28

Community

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answered Mar 30 '13 at 16:50

Kermit

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Thank you for the claryfication – mario.schlipf Mar 30 '13 at 16:51
@schlimpf . . . To emphasize, in SQL, tables are inherently unordered. Remember, relational databases are based on sets, not tables, and sets do not have an ordering. – Gordon Linoff Mar 30 '13 at 16:56

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 30 '13 at 16:51

Without specifying ORDER BY, there is no guarantee that your columns will be returned in any particular order -- you should consider it to be random. The order depends on the engine; with MyISAM they will be returned in INSERT order unless there have been updates/deletes. With InnoDB, they will be ordered by the primary key.

If you want your columns to be sorted in a particular order, include an ordinal column / timestamp in the table definition and ORDER BY that.

Get entries in order they were inserted without a primary key?

2 Answers2