Hello,

How to find values that are not in sequence ?

A
B
C
D
Z
E
F
G

or something like this:

1
2
3
8
4
5
6

Each of the highlighted values is not in the proper sequence, how to find those ?

Thanks

like i mentioned on devshed, you have to give more information

please show the actual query that produces these results

as you know, the rows of a table do not have an inherent order, and especially not a table consisting of only one column

Hello r937,

Actually I don't have any working query, i was wondering that if its possible through MySQL ?
Thanks for ur reply.

It may be possible, depending on the problem. We may be able to answer your question once you provide more detail, but as you've asked the question so far the answer is "maybe".

-PatP

The bigger question is why would the sequence matter, except when you display
Dave

Hello,

Please refer the example:

Table

Andy Xyz
Bruce Xyz
Collinwood Xyz
Dragon Xyz
Zypher Xyz
Elli Xyz
Frank Xyz

As u can see, the name Zypher is not in alphabetical series.
So, can it be sorted out by using MySql query ?

Thanks

is all you are asking is can you get rows ordered into a specific order?
if so the answer is yes... place on ORDER BY clause at the end of the select statement

if you have another sequence and you want to finds rows out of sequence then thats a different and much more complex task

Hii Healdem.
Thanks for replying

Yaa, I am trying to finds rows which are out of sequence.

like i said, rows will be placed in table according to space and clustering, what difference does it make how they are put into table? and why would you need to find them? Allow the database to store the data according to its needs and you can query/order the data according to your needs.
Dave

Hii Dave,

The records which are alphabetically arranged are like tel. directory structure for different cities.

So it cannot be sorted in Asc/Dsc order by name, because all the cities will get merged.

keeping the record structure intact, i need to find the "out-of-sequence" records.

Thanks.

good news!!! your quest is over!!!

rows in a table have no sequence (i told you this days ago)

you may now move on to your next problem

can you identisy how a row will be out of sequence
and what cause that out of sequence condition, as others have said the way data is stored in a database is out of your control and you cannot rely on the db storing data in a specific sequence.

thats why the designers of SQL implemented the ORDER BY clause.
read da manuel as to what sort of (pardon the deliberate pun) order you want yoru rows to come in.

unless you have a really really flaky design and obtuse data source then ORDER BY should be able to do what you want

a footnote, as others have said, this forum isn't really for learning SQL from the roots, its about helping. if you are an absolute beginner then there are plenty of other sites such as w3schools. heck theres even some good books on SQL... You could always buy a copy of Rudy's (R937) book simply SQL.. in all good signatures on this forum.

MORE GOOD NEWS .... you can have more than one field in your ORDER BY clause so use
ORDER BY
city,
last name