AFAIK,
ORDER BY < ordinal number > was removed in ANSI SQL99 standard and M$ is considering to deprecate it in the future version of SQL Server.
>
>I didn't see anyone suggest this yet.
>
>
>...
> order by 3
>
>
>For the ORDER BY clause you can use the column number. You can not use the column number in the GROUP BY clause.
>
--sb--