SQLite query gives different results

Question

I am developing a small application in C and I want to use SQLite to perform some queries on a database. The problem is that I am getting a weird behaviour.

If I run the same query on the same database on Firefox plugin "SQLite Manager" I get the expected result, but if I run it through the C interface in my program I get a wrong order of the resulting tuples.

You can find the database here (CSV or SQLite format), while the problematic query is this one:

SELECT name, slot, id, species_id 
FROM type_names T, pokemon_types PT, pokemon P 
WHERE T.type_id = PT.type_id 
AND P.id = PT.pokemon_id AND T.local_language_id = 9 
AND P.identifier LIKE '%char%' 
ORDER BY P.species_id;

On Firefox I get the expected result:

+--------+------+-------+------------+
|  name  | slot |  id   | species_id |
+--------+------+-------+------------+
| Fire   |    1 |     4 |          4 |
| Fire   |    1 |     5 |          5 |
| Fire   |    1 |     6 |          6 |
| Flying |    2 |     6 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 | 10034 |          6 |
| Dragon |    2 | 10034 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 | 10035 |          6 |
| Flying |    2 | 10035 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 |   390 |        390 |
+--------+------+-------+------------+

while in CI get this:

+--------+------+-------+------------+
|  name  | slot |  id   | species_id |
+--------+------+-------+------------+
| Fire   |    1 |     4 |          4 |
| Fire   |    1 |     5 |          5 |
| Flying |    2 |     6 |          6 |
| Flying |    2 | 10035 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 |     6 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 | 10034 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 | 10035 |          6 |
| Dragon |    2 | 10034 |          6 |
| Fire   |    1 |   390 |        390 |
+--------+------+-------+------------+

I also tried with some simple code that only access the database with that query and I always get the same problem, here is the code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sqlite3.h>

// argument 1 is path to db, argument 2 is query

static int callback(void *NotUsed, int argc, char **argv, char **azColName){

    int i;
    for(i=0; i<argc; i++){
        printf("%s\t", argv[i] ? argv[i] : "NULL");
    }
    printf("\n");
    return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char **argv){
    sqlite3 *db;
    char *zErrMsg = 0;
    int rc;

    if( argc!=3 ){
        fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s DATABASE SQL-STATEMENT\n", argv[0]);
        return(1);
    }
    rc = sqlite3_open(argv[1], &db);
    if( rc ){
        fprintf(stderr, "Can't open database: %s\n", sqlite3_errmsg(db));
        sqlite3_close(db);
        return(1);
    }
    rc = sqlite3_exec(db, argv[2], callback, 0, &zErrMsg);
    if( rc!=SQLITE_OK ){
        fprintf(stderr, "SQL error: %s\n", zErrMsg);
        sqlite3_free(zErrMsg);
    }
    sqlite3_close(db);
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

The entirety of your ORDER BY clause is ORDER BY P.species_id . Therefore, both outputs are 100% correct (they are both sorted with the P.species_id value ascending). If you want the results to be sorted by additional columns, you will need to include those columns in your ORDER BY clause.

Answer 2

Seems like you are expecting:

SELECT name, slot, id, species_id 
FROM type_names T, pokemon_types PT, pokemon P 
WHERE T.type_id = PT.type_id 
AND P.id = PT.pokemon_id 
AND T.local_language_id = 9 
AND P.identifier LIKE '%char%' ORDER BY P.species_id, id, slot ASC;

Further qualify your ORDER BY to be able to replicate the results exactly.