Question

How can I query data in the order it was created?

I don’t have a date-created field in this table.

Answer 1

If you don’t have a field storing the time of insertion, or any other meta-data regarding the order of insertion, there is no reliable way to get this information.

You could maybe depend on a clustered index key, but these are not guaranteed. Neither are IDENTITY fields or other auto-generated fields.

To clarify, an IDENTITY field does auto-increment, but…

• You can insert explicit values with IDENTITY_INSERT
• You can reseed and start reusing values
• There is no built-in enforcement of uniqueness for an identity field

If the ID field is your PK, you can probably use that to get a rough idea:

SELECT *
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY IdField ASC

Per your comment, the field is a GUID. In that case, there is no way to return any sort of reliable order since GUIDs are inherently random and non-sequential.