Hi,
As far as I know, Jet, and MS SQL Server, store their columns in the way
they consider to be the most efficient way, not necessary in the order we
declare them, so there is no physically fixed "before" of "after" column.
You just have "an" additional column, with an ALTER TABLE statement to ADD a
COLUMN.
Otherwise, you could end up with a bit, 63 unused bit, a double-word, a
bit, again 63 unused bits, a double-word, etc (to align the double words on
double word boundaries). Clearly, more efficient is to store: double-word,
double-word, ..., word, word, ..., octet, octet, .... bit, bit, bit. and
each field is on its "boundary".
(Well, I "assume" here that the optional [AFTER | BEFORE] someColumn
intention is to insert a new column before or after a given one, since I
don't know very much MySQL).
Use a SELECT statement with an explicit list to retrieve the columns in a
specific given order.
Hoping it may help,
Vanderghast, Access MVP