Hm, is someone able to explain this?

Same code as before, but positioned order by (1 instead of i) and "-" as separator for better readability.

SET NOCOUNT ON

create table #xxx (i int identity, a varchar(3))

go

declare @txt varchar(255)

set @txt = 'Question' select @txt = isnull (a, '?') from #xxx order by i insert #xxx values ('of')

insert #xxx values ('the')

insert #xxx values ('day') select @txt = @txt + '-' + a from #xxx order by 1

select @txt

DROP TABLE #xxx

Result:

Looks like only the first or last (depending on DESC or ASC sort) row is used in the end result.

Is that expected behaviour?