I believe the answer is no. And am looking for a counter example to show that order of output is not guaranteed, absent an order by clause.
consider:
create table #order (orderId int primary key clustered
, customerId int not null -- references customer(customerId)
, orderDateTIme datetime not null)
insert into #order values (1, 100, '2009-01-01')
insert into #order values (2, 101, '2009-01-02')
insert into #order values (3, 102, '2009-01-03')
insert into #order values (4, 103, '2009-01-04')
insert into #order values (5, 100, '2009-01-05')
insert into #order values (6, 101, '2009-01-06')
insert into #order values (7, 101, '2009-01-07')
insert into #order values (8, 103, '2009-01-08')
insert into #order values (9, 105, '2009-01-09')
insert into #order values (10, 100, '2009-01-10')
insert into #order values (11, 101, '2009-01-11')
insert into #order values (12, 102, '2009-01-12')
insert into #order values (13, 103, '2009-01-13')
insert into #order values (14, 100, '2009-01-14')
insert into #order values (15, 100, '2009-01-15')
insert into #order values (16, 101, '2009-01-16')
insert into #order values (17, 102, '2009-01-17')
insert into #order values (18, 101, '2009-01-18')
insert into #order values (19, 100, '2009-01-19')
insert into #order values (20, 101, '2009-01-20')
select * from #order
-- Results in PK order due to clustered primary key
select orderId, CustomerId, orderDateTime
, row_number() over (partition by customerId order by orderDateTime) RN
from #order
On MS SQL Server 2005, the output ordering has two properties:
The rows for each
customerId
are contiguous in the output.Row_number()
is sequential within each customerId.
My understanding is that these two properties are not guaranteed absent an explicit order by clause. I am looking for an example where the above properties do not hold that is not forced by an order by clause, but is just a result of how MS SQL Server happens to work. Feel free to develop own table definition, indexes, etc in your example if needed.
Or if I am wrong, a link to a reference that would show that these orderings are guaranteed, even without an explicit order by clause.