Blurgh, sick in my mouth a little.

Im no sql purist by any means, but this *cant* work. ie relying on top 100 percent to order ,(at least in the long term)

Consider these two queries....

select *

from (Select 1 as rown) a

right join (

select top(100) percent object_id,name

from sys.objects order by name

) as b on a.rown<>b.object_id

go

select *

from (Select 1 as rown) a

right join (

select top(99.99) percent object_id,name

from sys.objects order by name

) as b on a.rown<>b.object_id

Look at the plans, the top 100 percent make so little sense it gets optimized out and the results come back in a 'random' order, or at least in SQL 2012 it does.

Ordering within SQL can and should only be applied to the final result set.

There is a 'fix' ( i hate to use that word for this issue ) in 2008

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926292

At the back of my mind i think there may even be a trace flag to enable this too ( im sure someone will correct me if wrong)