Why are inserted rows not shown in order?

Question

Hi y'all,
I'm doing some experimenting. I've set up a table with 3 columns: decimal digit, binary digit, and the difference in length between the former two. Then I wrote a small anonymous PL/SQL block with a single FOR loop. It takes in cycles every integer between 1 and 10000, and computes its binary value, the length difference, and then inserts the three (dec_num, bin_num, diff) into the table. However, the records are not in order! The first row after the run is number 1298! The number 1 is computed in the row number 303.
When I change the code to only compute the numbers from 1 to 1000, everything is okay, but when I increase the upper border back to 10000, this weird ordering takes place. I understand there's some optimization and paralelism going on. But how do I steer it? It's really bothersome... TIA.
code snippet:
for dec_num in 1..10000 LOOP
bin_num := dec2bin(dec_num);
diff := length(bin_num) - length(to_char(dec_num));
insert into correlation values (dec_num, bin_num, diff);
end loop;

Answer 1

Hello, thanks for the prompt answers, I don't request returning the rows in order, but would welcome having them inserted in order, in the first place! :) Of course, when I use ORDER BY to view the results, all is well. Is it really the only way?
Edited by: user5539369 on Nov 12, 2009 12:57 PM