Why is SQL strict about clause order? - sql

Question

This works:
SELECT * FROM users ORDER BY id LIMIT 5
This doesn't - throws a syntax error:
SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 5 ORDER BY id
SQL seems to be too strict about clause order.
Does it have a good reason to be that strict?
P.S. SELECT and FROM specify the source of the data and I agree that this should have a specific position in the query. The other clauses, though, just "play" with that data - they have a relationship with the source of the data, but not with each other so the fact that they should be ordered in a particular way doesn't seem very intuitive to me.

Answer 1

Hugh Darwen theorizes that it was fashionable for languages to be this way in the 1960s:
Do you take SELECT-FROM-WHERE for
granted, or do you, like me, find it
rather curious that the System R team
should have spurned the normal way of
writing expressions of arbitrary
complexity in favour of something
utterly idiosyncratic and, one might
say, rather dictatorial...?
The fact is that in the 1960s various
scripting languages (as we tend to
call such things these days) had come
about for the purposes of report
generation, especially ad hoc report
generation. We had one such language
in the prerelational DBMS called
Terminal Business System (TBS) that I
worked on for IBM from 1969-77. Our
language required the user to specify
the required report in a series of
steps that had to be given in the
prescribed order...
A somewhat similar but much more
sophisticated report generator was
later developed by IBM in the US, as
part of a product called (prosaically,
as was IBM's style in those days)
Generalized Information System
(GIS)... when I first looked at SQL,
my immediate reaction was "Oh no!
Son of GIS? Please not that!" I
might have been quite wrong about
this. The similarity I perceived
might have been illusory and even if
it was not, I have no firm evidence
that anybody in the System R team was
familiar with GIS. The fact remains
that the general style of a fixed
order of actions was the order of the
day at the time. I postulate that
SQL's SELECT-FROM-WHERE arose out of
this fashion.
From HAVING a Blunderful Time

Answer 2

When you write in english or another language, you also use a specific grammar.
You never put the verb at the end of the sentence in english but it is used in german.
In SQL, it's the same there is a syntax you have to respect.
You also don't write a query like that FROM user SELECT * ORDER BY xy WHERE a=b

Answer 3

Because this is MySQL's syntax:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/select.html

Answer 4

The parser is built for speed. If you allow inconsistant syntax, the parser takes more time to figure out what needs to be done. This can have a significant impact on performance.
Also, it makes it easier for humans to read.

Answer 5

LIMIT aside (it's TOP in SQL Server for example), there is a logical processing ORDER for SQL statements that reflects the syntax order
FROM
WHERE
GROUP BY
CUBE/ROLLUP
HAVING
SELECT
DISTINCT
TOP/LIMIT
ORDER BY
if you substitute LIMIT with TOP then it quite obvious

Answer 6

First and foremost, let me tell you
"Every language has its set of rules & regulations "
We need to follow this rules. Breaching of any kind of rules (e.g syntax) of any of the command will lead us to error.
Use the ORDER BY clause to specify the order in which cells on the left-hand side of the rule are to be evaluated. The expr must resolve to a dimension or measure column. If the ORDER BY clause is not specified, the order defaults to the order of the columns as specified in the DIMENSION BY clause.
Check out here for more :
Order By Clause (a)
Order By Clause (b)