launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Michael Hudson <michael.hudson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 21:06:30 -0500, Edwin Grubbs <edwin.grubbs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 7:40 PM, Michael Hudson
> <michael.hudson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Thu, 7 Oct 2010 22:53:58 +0100, Graham Binns <graham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> On Thursday, October 7, 2010, Michael Hudson
> >> <michael.hudson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> > Back in the SQLObject days we had a hack that would add "ORDER BY
> >> > random()" to any query that didn't have an ORDER BY already.  Do we
> >> > still have that?  Although in this case it seems we had an ORDER BY,
> >> > just not a sufficienly discriminating one.  Could you add ", random()"
> >> > to any query that does have an ORDER BY?
> >> >
> >>
> >> Wouldn't that just break everything that relied on a specific ordering?
> >
> > Not if the ordering was already specific enough to be unambiguous, and
> > if it's not specific enough to be unambiguous, it's a timebomb.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > mwh
> 
> 
> I think the confusion here is that Graham thinks you are suggesting replacing
> "ORDER BY name" with "ORDER BY random()", but you are actually suggesting
> that we append it, so "ORDER BY name" becomes "ORDER BY name, random()".

Yes, exactly.  Sorry if I was confusing!

Cheers,
mwh