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Asked: 2026-06-09T20:26:00+00:00

I have a SQL Server table that is using a uniqueidentifier as a clustered

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I have a SQL Server table that is using a uniqueidentifier as a clustered primary key. After creating the table and inserting several rows, I rebooted my server. The column uses NEWSEQUENTIALID() as its default value.

After reboot however, the next insert created a row with a GUID that was lower in value than those before, causing it to appear at the top of a SELECT * statement.

My question: is there any way to prevent shuffling (AKA preserve the ordering of rows) while using a GUID type clustered primary key?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you want to guarantee chronological order, add a column called CreatedDate, set it to not allow NULLs, and set the default to CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. Then to get the last 10 rows, you can say:

    SELECT TOP 10 (*) FROM dbo.foo ORDER BY CreatedDate DESC;

    This way your TOP makes sense. Without ORDER BY, as marc explained, your TOP is meaningless and while the results will be relatively predictable (they’re not quite random, I’d prefer the term “arbitrary”), they are not going to have any reliability to be ordered in the same order they were inserted. This is true whether you use a GUID or an integer for your primary key – no guarantees.

    You are never going to be able to guarantee order preservation with NEWSEQUENTIALID(), sorry, that’s just not how it works.

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