Re: viewing the original (chrnological) order of entered records

Solution #1:
Add a column to hold the time of entry:
ALTER TABLE life ADD COLUMN (entered_at timestamp); -- time of insert
ALTER TABLE life ALTER COLUMN entered_at DEFAULT now(); -- add it automagically
Then you can sort on this column, even if you don't select it for output (order by person_id, entered_at).
Disadvantage: Takes some extra space on disk. Use "WITHOUT OIDS" when creating the table to save some space.

Solution #2:
Use the OID of the row in the ORDER BY (order by person_id, oid). The OID is incremented for every row inserted.
Disadvantages:
This is unsafe, since it will fail when oid's wrap (after 2 billion inserts). That might not be a problem other than in theory :)
You cannot use "WITHOUT OIDS".

/Mattias

----- Original Message -----
From: Sven Van Acker
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 11:50 AM
Subject: [GENERAL] viewing the original (chrnological) order of entered records

Hi

I've the following problem:

I have a 2-column table with columns "person_id"(int4) and "phase"(text).

When I entered the following records in a chronological fashion: <1, "high school">; <1, "childhood"> and <2, "university">;

I requested the following select-statement.

SELECT person_id, phase FROM life ORDER BY person_id

And found the tuple <1, "childhood"> before the tuple <1, "high school">.

I want to view the chronological order of my entries, but ordered by person_id.

Is this possible in postgresql?