Inserting at a specific row
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Is it possible to insert data at a specific row? Ie. put a row of data right at the top of a table? Thanks a lot, Jim Did I post well? Rate it! Did I post badly? Rate that too!
Databases are set based systems, therefore there is no concept of the "top of [the] table". However, clustered indexes mean that even although there is no logical concept there is a physical structure in place which will put a row at the top of the table. So, perhaps what you needing to do is to create a clustered index on the column that you want to determine the sequence of the rows. However, you need to be careful as this will be the order that the rows are physically stored. Clustered indexes do not work so well if the column values are not unique as any searches will have to resort to a sequential search if there are duplicate values. Alternatively, if all you need is a specific order, for example display purposes, then what you need to do is to create a new column to store some sort of virtual row number, you can then assign a number to it indicating the row's position in the table. When you need to have the rows being returned in a certain sequence you can use the ORDER BY clause on the SELECT statement to return the rows in the order you need. Does this help?
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