Sorry, total SQL novice here, and I have a simple problem that does not justify learning a new subject. A search of the message board had some too many hits to wade through.

I have to extract records and use the fields in a Perl script. No matter how my SELECT statement is ordered, the fields in the output seem to appear in the order they were created in the database. Example:
SELECT Customer, Account, Status ..... will yield output of
Account <account #> Customer <customername> Status <status>

That would be fine, except I cannot ensure the tables are always built the same way in all of the databases. I need to control the output some other way. I could do it in Perl, with a lot of nested loops, but that would be inefficient. Any suggestion?

: Sorry, total SQL novice here, and I have a simple problem that does not justify learning a new subject. A search of the message board had some too many hits to wade through.
:
: I have to extract records and use the fields in a Perl script. No matter how my SELECT statement is ordered, the fields in the output seem to appear in the order they were created in the database. Example:
: SELECT Customer, Account, Status ..... will yield output of
: Account <account #> Customer <customername> Status <status>
:
: That would be fine, except I cannot ensure the tables are always built the same way in all of the databases. I need to control the output some other way. I could do it in Perl, with a lot of nested loops, but that would be inefficient. Any suggestion?

That's unusual. SQL results are by definition unordered rows, but the columns should always be returned in the order you specify. That's so you can reference the fields properly.

I've never used Perl so I can't help there, but I imagine there must be some way to fetch records into some data structure which would allow you to reference individual fields by name in whatever order you require.


infidel

$ select * from users where clue > 0
no rows returned