ASP- SQL Server..Query help....

[cancer10]

Hello,

I am using ASP and MS SQL Sever 2000 as backend database..

I am writing a SQL query which will pick up top 5 recipes details who have scored the highest marks from the following table

tblrecipes -

ID |  recipe_name | Total

The following points to be noted:

- The table has 500 records.
- 50 of them have achieved the highest marks ie 100 marks each
- My following query is picking up top 5 records who have scored 100 marks

SELECT TOP 5 ID, total, recipe_name
FROM tblrecipes 
ORDER BY total DESC

and getting this output:

[img]http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/3d14a5272a.jpg[/img]

Now my question is:

On what basis its showing up this sequence of listing? I mean why the ID 89 is on the top and 136 at the bottom? Why the ID is not the other way round?

Like the following?

ID
__
178
136
89
286
340

Can someone explain please?

Thanx

[msaqib]

Try

SELECT TOP 5 ID, total, recipe_name
FROM tblrecipes 
ORDER BY total DESC, ID DESC

The thing is that you haven't manetioned to sort the ID colums as well. So IDs appear in the order of last modified data/time.