ADQL evolution: OFFSET?

[gerard.lemson at gmail.com]

Hi list
Just wanted to voice my support for Mark's use case, which is exactly the
way I use TOP: to see an example of the data, generally used without
ordering.

> 
> > In terms of whether OFFSET makes sense without ORDER BY: I think
> > that's really a moot point since ADQL has allowed TOP without ORDER BY
> > since the beginning, which is exactly as questionable.  So, I'd claim
> 
> I don't think that's really true.  TOP is just if you want a result but
you don't want
> it too big.  Non-ORDERed OFFSET would on the other hand presumably be used
> to provide pagination.  The problem there is that you might get different
> orderings for different queries, so end up with duplicate or missing
records.
> 

Gerard


> --
> Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
> m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-9288776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/