Re: [Firebird-devel] FIRST/SKIP vs ORDER BY or select expressions strike back

[Mike N. <ta...@al...>]

Dmitry Yemanov wrote:

> Since FIRST/SKIP has been originally implemented, we still have some weird
> things with this feature. I think it's obvious that FIRST/SKIP doesn't
make
> much sense (although can be used) without an ORDER BY clause.

The only input I can give on this is:

I believe a FIRST/SKIP on an unordered set would be completely useless. If I
have an unordered set S, and subtract a set "first" M from S, and S-M could
return completely different responses from time to time given the same set
S, would it be useful for anything but stochastic theory research?

In plain language; unless the set S is ordered, SKIPping first 'n' entries
just makes no sense in something that's supposed to provide a predictable
result.

/Mike