In this blog post, let’s learn about the error message “1033 – The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP, OFFSET or FOR XML is also specified.” in Microsoft SQL Server, the reason why it appears and the solution to fix it.
SQL Server Error Message
1033 – The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP, OFFSET or FOR XML is also specified.
Reason for the Error
The SQL Server Error Msg 1033 occurs when you try to use the ORDER BY clause in a view, inline function, derived table, subquery, or common table expression without also specifying the TOP, OFFSET, or FOR XML clause. This error is raised because SQL Server does not allow you to order the result set of a subquery or derived table without explicitly limiting the number of rows returned.
When you use the ORDER BY clause without the TOP, OFFSET, or FOR XML clause, SQL Server does not know how many rows to return and in what order. This can cause performance issues and may produce incorrect results, especially when the query is used as a subquery or a derived table.
Solution
To resolve this error, you can either specify the TOP, OFFSET, or FOR XML clause to limit the number of rows returned and order the result set or remove the ORDER BY clause altogether if it is not necessary.
Here is an example of how to use the TOP clause to resolve this error:
SELECT * FROM ( SELECT col1, col2, col3 FROM myTable WHERE col4 = 'some value' ORDER BY col1 DESC ) AS derivedTable WHERE col1 > 100 ORDER BY col1 ASC OFFSET 0 ROWS FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;
In this example, we use the TOP clause to limit the number of rows returned by the subquery and the OFFSET and FETCH NEXT clauses to specify the subset of rows to return. This ensures that the result set is ordered and limited to the specified number of rows.
