[cancer10]

Hello,

I am using ASP and MS SQL Sever 2000 as backend database..

I am writing a SQL query which will pick up top 5 recipes details who have scored the highest marks from the following table

tblrecipes -

Code:

 ID |  recipe_name | Total

The following points to be noted:

- The table has 500 records.
- 50 of them have achieved the highest marks ie 100 marks each
- My following query is picking up top 5 records who have scored 100 marks

Code:

SELECT TOP 5 ID, total, recipe_name
FROM tblrecipes 
ORDER BY total DESC

and getting this output:

http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3d14a5272a.jpg


Now my question is:

On what basis its showing up this sequence of listing? I mean why the ID 89 is on the top and 136 at the bottom? Why the ID is not the other way round?

Like the following?

ID
__
178
136
89
286
340


Can someone explain please?


Thanx

[Vicious]

This is probably something for the database section.

Anyway, I think that if there's multiple rows that could be in the Top5, then MS SQL takes random row? Totally unsure if this is true or not

If you want to have more control over the output, try defining more fields in your ORDER BY clause..

[cancer10]

Originally Posted by Vicious

If you want to have more control over the output, try defining more fields in your ORDER BY clause..

for example?

[Vicious]

ORDER BY field1 ASC, field2 ASC, field3 DESC

...