[SOLVED] Preserving ORDER BY in SELECT INTO

Preserving ORDER BY in SELECT INTO

I have a T-SQL query that takes data from one table and copies it into a new table but only rows meeting a certain condition:

SELECT VibeFGEvents.* 
INTO VibeFGEventsAfterStudyStart 
FROM VibeFGEvents
LEFT OUTER JOIN VibeFGEventsStudyStart
ON 
    CHARINDEX(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(logName, 'MyVibe ', ''), ' new laptop', ''), ' old laptop', ''), excelFilename) > 0
    AND VibeFGEventsStudyStart.MIN_TitleInstID <= VibeFGEvents.TitleInstID
    AND VibeFGEventsStudyStart.MIN_WinInstId <= VibeFGEvents.WndInstID
WHERE VibeFGEventsStudyStart.excelFilename IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY VibeFGEvents.id

The code using the table relies on its order, and the copy above does not preserve the order I expected. I.e. the rows in the new table VibeFGEventsAfterStudyStart are not monotonically increasing in the VibeFGEventsAfterStudyStart.id column copied from VibeFGEvents.id.

In T-SQL how might I preserve the ordering of the rows from VibeFGEvents in VibeFGEventsStudyStart?

Solution

What for?

Point is – data in a table is not ordered. In SQL Server the intrinsic storage order of a table is that of the (if defined) clustered index.

The order in which data is inserted is basically "irrelevant". It is forgotten the moment the data is written into the table.

As such, nothing is gained, even if you get this stuff. If you need an order when dealing with data, you HAVE To put an order by clause on the select that gets it. Anything else is random - i.e. the order you et data is not determined and may change.

So it makes no sense to have a specific order on the insert as you try to achieve.

SQL 101: sets have no order.