If I can speak for Joe I think his school of thought is that you should be able to define a PK from a set of column(s) that are...

Why don't you just use the solution they gave you two days ago at sqlTeam??

Select top 1 *

From #tbl

Where pid = 1

Order By a asc, b desc, c asc, i asc

pid         a           b           c           i          

----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------

1           1          ...

Assuming your "DateTime" column is a data type of datetime then using a function such as (CONVERT(CHAR(11),DateTime) will not allow the optimizer to use any index that may be on...

Create a temp table and have each of your statements place their results in the temp table.  For example Insert into #temp ... Select......

Then at the end do one Select...

I think you haven't clearly stated the problem or it is ambiguous by its nature.  Given your example, can you state exaclty what logic you would like to be applied...

"...If your clustered index is by date hired (DateTime Data) you will always, without fail, never miss, until the end of time, guaranteed have the data returned ordered by the...

Here's one more interesting reply from the ms newgroup.

The ODBC escape sequences and functions are not undocumented.

They are documented at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odbc/htm/odbcescape_sequences_in_odbc.asp

After looking at this suggestion from PhilPacha it apprears to be the best solution.  So check out DBCC CHECKIDENT.

I understand how clustered indexes work and they can be a very handy feature.  The bottom line is that if you truly want to guarantee the order in which...

Bob,

Your best bet is to stick with Getdate().  This is the standard function used by just about everyone.

I curious, where did you come accross fn Now() ?

In addition to several replies advising to stay away from such undocumented features I did get this reply to my post on a ms newsgroup: