RE: Random ordering

Looking at this again, perhaps the requirement is for something like the
EXSLT function random:random-sequence() - see
http://www.exslt.org/random/functions/random-sequence/index.html

This can be a very handy function - I was using it last week to produce a
test data generator. But there's always a question mark about whether being
handy is sufficient justification to put a function in the core.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Melton [mailto:jim.melton@acm.org] 
> Sent: 28 May 2007 19:41
> To: Michael Kay
> Cc: 'Markus Jonsson'; public-qt-comments@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Random ordering
> 
> Ummm...not to mention the fact that SQL (the SQL standard, 
> that is) has nothing spelled "random" with or without parens. 
>  I'm certain that a number of implementations provide such a 
> facility or function, but "SQL" does not.
> 
> Finally, the relational model, of which SQL is an imprecise 
> implementation, says that, absent an explicit instruction to 
> order results, the results are in an undefined order.  
> Therefore, it is arguable that such a facility isn't needed 
> in any case.
> 
> As Mike said, you really need to help us understand what 
> value this facility might add, as well as what it actually means.
> 
> Hope this helps,
>     Jim
> 
> At 5/23/2007 06:05 AM, Michael Kay wrote:
> 
> > > Hi! Will next XQuery spec allow something like "order by 
> random()", 
> > > similar to SQL?
> > >
> >
> >I don't think is currently on the requirements list. If you want it 
> >added, you'll need to explain what you expect it to do and 
> why it's a 
> >good idea (don't imagine that people can guess the semantics 
> from the syntax).
> >
> >Michael Kay
> >http://www.saxonica.com/
> 
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Received on Monday, 28 May 2007 20:18:58 UTC