Does SELECT * FROM proxy_Excel preserve the original row ordering?

[Breck_Carter]

Does a simple SELECT * FROM a non-relational (Excel, text file, etc) proxy table preserve the row/record/line ordering in the original file?

This is important to know, for a large class of source files that do not contain ANY data that is suitable for ORDER BY... the initial SELECT must preserve the row ordering... on the SQL Anywhere side an autoincrement column can THEN be used to continue the preservation:

INSERT copy_table ( all-columns-except-the-autoincrement ) SELECT * FROM proxy_table;

[Former Member]

There is no gear in the Remote Data Access layer to preserve row/record/line ordering since no such capability exists within ODBC. As a result you are at the mercy of the underlying ODBC driver (and possibly data source as well). There may be options within the DSN to do the "right" thing, but otherwise, I would say there is no guarantee.