RE: SQL FETCH FIRST and columns in ORDER BY

You're correct to want to eliminate the cursor in this case. SELECT
HSACTION INTO :myHsAction FROM ... WHERE ... ORDER BY ... FETCH FIRST
ROW ONLY will perform slightly better and is simpler to code and
maintain. Another possible approach is to use a subselect that gets a MAX

<snip> Great! Thanks! I had avoided SELECT INTO simply because of lack of
trust for FETCH FIRST. So the FETCH FIRST... reduces the set AFTER the
ORDER BY, right?

Finally, you use an RRN in the ORDER BY. Is there absolutely no other
way to get the right order? Like another table column to serve as a
secondary order-by column. RRN is not keyed internally so I recommend
avoiding it when possible.

In this case, alas, no. I would prefer to have a SEQUENCE by which these
rows could be ordered (allowing us to REUSEDLT, for example), but the file
has hundreds of millions of rows, and the client understandably worries
about such changes. I've not seen Production, but as I understand it, the
file is so large that RGZPFM is out of the question. Not sure how they
purge.

Hth, Elvis

It does, thanks.

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
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