This is an INCREDIBLY COMMON misunderstanding I see at clients all the time. You simply CANNOT rely on ORDER of data unless it is EXPLICITLY stated with an ORDER BY at the level you expect/require ordering!!! Common places I see this is INSERTing data into a temp table and then SELECTing it back out - people expect it back in the same row order "put in". The other is when there is a CLUSTERed INDEX on a table - they feel that the data will ALWAYS SELECT back out in CLUSTERED INDEX order, but that too is NOT a valid assumption.