I have some questions about your post wolfkillj.
heaps, will logically order rows in the order in which they were inserted
What do you mean by 'logically' in the above?
*However*, clustered indexes ONLY provide a logical order for storing rows
Are you sure? No physical order whatsoever?
...but it is merely coincidence that the rows are in that order when they leave the final operator in the execution plan
Not coincidence. Under some circumstances (often select * from
), rows are returned in the order defined by the clustered PK, just because the SQL query optimiser decided that that was the best way to do it. It's not guaranteed, but it's not coincidence either.
Note that I am not suggesting that ORDER BY should not be used, just picking up on the details in your message.
If you haven't even tried to resolve your issue, please don't expect the hard-working volunteers here to waste their time providing links to answers which you could easily have found yourself.