Question

can we use order by clause in view in sql server 2005?

    CREATE VIEW vw_authors 

    AS

    SELECT TOP 10 PERCENT * 

    FROM dbo.authors 
    Group by au_id
    ORDER BY au_fname

Answer 1

Yes and no. You cannot use order by in the view itself to specify the order. You can use it for row selection, such as with top 10. From the MSDN online docs:

The SELECT clauses in a view definition cannot include the following:
     COMPUTE or COMPUTE BY clauses;
     An ORDER BY clause, unless there is also a TOP clause in the select list of the SELECT statement ^(a);
     The INTO keyword;
     The OPTION clause;
     A reference to a temporary table or a table variable.

^(a) The ORDER BY clause is used only to determine the rows that are returned by the TOP clause in the view definition. The ORDER BY clause does not guarantee ordered results when the view is queried, unless ORDER BY is also specified in the query itself.