DISTINCT not returning data in sorted order after specific no. of

Hi
I have the problem with the DISTINCT keyword. I used the following statement
to get the distinct values from the table:
SELECT DISTINCT trade_name FROM Customer
This works absolutely perfect getting the distinct values and getting in
sorted order. But my requirement needs the statement to be as :
SELECT DISTINCT RTRIM(trade_name) FROM Customer
With the above statement, it works fine only if the table contains few 100
of records. My table contains around 6000+ records and the above statement
returns DISTINCTINCT values but does not get them in sorted order.
The same statement works fine if the there are around say 500+ records. I
see that the results displayed are distinct and sorted as well.
The field in question (trade_name) of 30 chars (char(30))
Why is this happening.Without ORDER BY the sort order is undefined for any SQL query. Add
ORDER BY:
SELECT DISTINCT trade_name
FROM Customer
ORDER BY trade_name
SELECT DISTINCT RTRIM(trade_name)
FROM Customer
ORDER BY RTRIM(trade_name)
David Portas
SQL Server MVP
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