I don't like the ordinal order by, but for a different reason. I would hope that if you are altering the Select portion, you'd have enough sense to look at the entire statement anyway.

I don't like it because I like code to be self documenting where ever possible. Order by CustomerNum, DateInvoiced is a hell of a lot clearer than Order by 3, 4 in my book. I could get out another soapbox and talk about using clearly named field names, but that belongs in someone else's article!

Just for discussion purposes, has anyone looked at any performance differences using ordinals? I haven't, and unless it was very significant, I still wouldn't use them due to the clarity issue.

Student of SQL and Golf, Master of Neither