Hi

Timestamp is not a character field.. as stated in books online:

A nonnullable timestamp column is semantically equivalent to a binary(8)
column. A nullable timestamp column is semantically equivalent to a
varbinary(8) column.

When you select the column in QA, it will be displayed as a hexadecimal
number.

If you include DDL ( Create table statements etc... ) and example data (as
Insert statements) along with your query and the output, it may be clearer
what is occuring.

John


"Astra" <info@NoEmail.com> wrote in message news:40f7b5ea$1_4@127.0.0.1...
> Hi All
>
> I know an SQL Server timestamp seems to be as useful as rocking horse for
> show jumping, but I'm hoping you know a 'fudge' to get me round a problem
or
> at least confirm that it isn't possible.
>
> I have 2 tables, one called ACCOUNTS and one called STOCK.
>
> These tables have the usual ints, varchars, etc and have a timestamp field
> as well.
>
> My end user wants to see a simple list of the details in these tables
> (individually - no joins present here), but sorted from most recently
> updated to never touched.
>
> As the timestamp seems to update each time a transaction hits it I though
> this would be perfect, but I've had the following mixed results:
>
> 1) I did a simple ORDER BY TIMESTAMP DESC, but because the order is
> alphanumeric I don't get a true 'recent to old' list.
>
> 2) So I did ORDER BY CAST(TIMESTAMP AS INT) DESC. There is a numeric
sort
> now, but the timestamp values seem to be hit and miss so that an account
> that I know should be near the top is around about the middle.
>
> Do you know how I can achieve the results I want?
>
> Is the timestamp a waste of time?
>
> Thanks
>
> Robbie
>
>
>