I never use the column positional (I think it is called ordinal) as the SORT BY column.
I think it is much more clear to use the explicit column name, so that there is never any lack of clarity when you need to use a formula to compute the ordering column.
It may be possible that I've heard somewhere that the ordinal ORDER BY syntax may be deprecated at some time but I could be wrong about that.
You should have made this a Poll question.
My vote: Bad form
My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?
My advice:
INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.
Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
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