ORDER BY clause with expression

Question

Considering that all the column names and table name is valid, what happens internally when the following query is run?
SQL> SELECT STU_ID, STU_NAME FROM STUDENT ORDER BY 2+3, STU_ID;
What i found out was the rows get ordered in ascending order of STU_ID. It's quite clear that it is ignoring the expressing 2+3, so my doubts are:
(a) Is it appending any pseudo-column to the table with 2+3 getting evaluated to 5?
(b) If there exist a 5th column in the table student and we specify it in the select statement's select list (5 column names) then why its not considering it as 5 and sorting the data according that?
(c) Is it true that, any expression we write is getting evaluated to NULL? Then is it that ORDER BY NULL evaluates to no ordering and the parser searches for next column-name or position (if specified) ?
(d) if neither then, what's the reason of the ignorance?

Answer 1

Hi,
Welcome to the forum!
987236 wrote:
Considering that all the column names and table name is valid, what happens internally when the following query is run?
SQL> SELECT STU_ID, STU_NAME FROM STUDENT ORDER BY 2+3, STU_ID;
What i found out was the rows get ordered in ascending order of STU_ID. It's quite clear that it is ignoring the expressing 2+3, so my doubts are:
(a) Is it appending any pseudo-column to the table with 2+3 getting evaluated to 5There's no pseduo-column involved. (Pseudo-columns are something that Oracle provides for you, without you having to spell out what you want. ROWID and LEVEL are examples of pseudo-columns. In this example, 2+3 is an Expression . Like pseudo-columns, expressions can usually appear in the ORDER BY clause, even though they are not actually stored in the table.)
It's sorting first by the NUMBER 5 (= 2 + 3), not the 5th column. Since the NUMBER 5 has the same value on every row, every row ties for first place. The result of sorting by any constant is the same; the results are the same as not including that exrpression in the ORDER BY clause. That is the ORDER BY clause you posted is equivalent to
ORDER BY  2 + 3
,         'foo'
,         SYSDATE
,         NULL
,         stu_idand it's also equivalent to
ORDER BY  stu_idNone of the expressions except stu_id vary from row to row, so none of them affect the sorting.
(b) If there exist a 5th column in the table student and we specify it in the select statement's select list (5 column names) then why its not considering it as 5 and sorting the data according that?As Solomon said, only number literals are taken to mean a column. 5 is a number literal, so
ORDER BY  5means "sort by the 5th column", but 2 + 3 is not a literal (it's an expression that happens to include a couple of literals), so
ORDER BY  2 + 3does not refer to the 5th colunmn.
(c) Is it true that, any expression we write is getting evaluated to NULL? Then is it that ORDER BY NULL evaluates to no ordering and the parser searches for next column-name or position (if specified) ?No, when you way "ORDER BY x", the rows with lower values of x come first, followed by rows with higher values of x. Rows with the same value of x will be together, in no particular order with respect to each other (unless there is a tie-breaker expression later in the ORDER BY clause.
That's exactly what happens when you say "ORDER BY NULL". NULL has the same value (actually, the same lack of any value) on all rows, so all the rows have the same value of x, and they will appear in no particular order.
(d) if neither then, what's the reason of the ignorance?