accessing table in LIFO order

From: "Ethan Collins" <collins(dot)ethans+psql(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: accessing table in LIFO order
Date: 2008-06-06 22:55:09
Message-ID: 9fb37e4a0806061555m2da30e26id3ceed79dee07ba7@mail.gmail.com
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I have got a table that holds 2 columns: date_id and info. date_id is
bigint, created as, for eg. 17 May 2008, 19:05 hrs => 200805171905. This
table is populated with {date, info} pair that I receive frequently. AND
there can be mltiple such entries with a single date_id but varying info,
for eg. 20 entries with same date_id but different info. I haven't created
any primary key or index.

I use query that looks like this:
SELECT date_id, info FROM netproto_entries ORDER BY date_id DESC
LIMIT <limit_val>;

Questions:
- For higher values of limit_val (say 70/75/..), when I change it, the order
in which I get the entries changes. Eg. it shows me one info at the top at
one time, and another on the next time with a different value of
limit_val.

- My intent is to fetch the entries from the database in LIFO order, most
recently entered entry at the top. For the elements with the date_id being
the same, they are not in LIFO order. I understand that I can add another
incrementing index column and sort the table based on that. But, without
adding this,
does postgresql have any method/configuration to get me output in LIFO
order ?
And are there any better methods available compared to adding another
index
column (as mentioned above) ?

Thanks,
Ethan

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