True, but even going all the way back to E.F. Codd, there's "cheating" involved with all sorts of implicit sorting. Even now, the default behavior of SQLite is

True, but even going all the way back to E.F. Codd, there's "cheating" involved with all sorts of implicit sorting. Even now, the default behavior of SQLite is still "undefined" if a Select column doesn't appear in Group By. Well, to be precise it's a single "arbitrary chosen row" used to sort the results. https://www.sqlite.org/lang_select.html#resultset https://www.sqlite.org/lang_select.html#resultset I'm not bagging on SQLite here (I love it!), but I am bagging on SQL 'cuz EVERY implementation must make far too many of these sorts of Faustian bargains.