I’m working with a database table and need to find out the position or ordinal number of specific columns. I tried using some SQL functions but I’m not getting the results I expected.
SELECT COLUMN_NAME, ORDINAL_POSITION
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name = 'Employee'
ORDER BY ordinal_position
I want to know if there are other ways to get the column index numbers. Is there a built-in function or query that can help me identify where each column sits in the table structure? Any help would be great because I need this for a project I’m working on.
ur query looks good - that’s the standard approach. Double-check ur table name though, since some databases are case sensitive. If ur using multiple schemas, try schema.Employee instead.
wait, which database are ya usin? the approach changes dependin on if it’s mysql, postgres, oracle, etc. also, why do ya need column positions specifically? buildin dynamic queries or somethin? would help if we knew the use case - might have better suggestions!
Your query is actually the most reliable method across different database systems. You might run into issues if the table’s in a different schema than your default one though. Try specifying the schema explicitly: WHERE table_schema = 'your_schema_name' AND table_name = 'Employee'. You can also use system catalog views specific to your database. For PostgreSQL, query pg_attribute joined with pg_class. SQL Server has sys.columns joined with sys.tables. These database-specific methods sometimes give you extra metadata that information_schema doesn’t expose, but your current approach works fine for basic column positioning.