It is a worst practice when it comes to production class code.
But it sure is a power users tool and a shortcut for ad hoc queries. When I am working on a problem that requires me to run a bunch of SELECT statements, I am not going to type the column names in ORDER BY clause. I'll simply use ordinal numbers.
Here's another reason why, we shouldn't use ordinal position in production code:
SELECT id, name
FROM sysobjects
ORDER BY 1.2
Notice the dot between 1 and 2. It's a typo, it should actually be a comma. But the statement still works, except that the output is not sorted as you'd expect, there by introducing a bug.
And no, there are no performance differences.
HTH,
Vyas
Edited by - vyaskn on 10/01/2002 07:03:08 AM
HTH,
Vyas
SQL Server MVP
http://vyaskn.tripod.com/