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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T05:58:23+00:00

All rows in MySQL tables are being inserted like this: 1 2 3 Is

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All rows in MySQL tables are being inserted like this:

1
2
3

Is there any way how to insert new row at a top of table so that table looks like this?

3
2
1

Yes, yes, I know “order by” but let me explain the problem. I have a dating website and users can search profiles by sex, age, city, etc. There are more than 20 search criteria and it’s not possible to create indexes for each possible combination. So, if I use “order by”, the search usually ends with “using temporary, using filesort” and this causes a very high server load. If I remove “order by” oldest profiles are shown as first and users have to go to the last page to see the new profiles. That’s very bad because first pages of search results always look the same and users have a feeling that there are no new profiles. That’s why I asked this question. If it’s not possible to insert last row at top of table, can you suggest anything else?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The order in which the results are returned when there’s no ORDER BY clause depends on the RDBM. In the case of MySQL, or at least most engines, if you don’t explicitly specify the order it will be ascending, from oldest to new entries. Where the row is located “physically” doesn’t matter. I’m not sure if all mysql engines work that way though. I.e., in PostgreSQL the “default” order shows the most recently updated rows first. This might be the way some of the MySQL engines work too.

    Anyway, the point is – if you want the results ordered – always specify sort order, don’t just depend on something default that seems to work. In you case you want something trivial – you want the users in descending order, so just use:

    SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY id DESC
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