Is order of parameters for database Command object really important?

Question

I was debugging a database operation code and I found that proper UPDATE was never happening though the code never failed as such. This is the code:

        condb.Open();
        OleDbCommand dbcom = new OleDbCommand("UPDATE Word SET word=?,sentence=?,mp3=? WHERE id=? AND exercise_id=?", condb);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", wd.ID);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("exercise_id", wd.ExID);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("word", wd.Name);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("sentence", wd.Sentence);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("mp3", wd.Mp3);

But after some tweaking this worked:

        condb.Open();
        OleDbCommand dbcom = new OleDbCommand("UPDATE Word SET word=?,sentence=?,mp3=? WHERE id=? AND exercise_id=?", condb);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("word", wd.Name);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("sentence", wd.Sentence);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("mp3", wd.Mp3);                         
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("id", wd.ID);
        dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("exercise_id", wd.ExID);

1. Why is it so important that the parameters in WHERE clause has to be given the last in case of OleDb connection? Having worked with MySQL previously, I could (and usually do) write parameters of WHERE clause first because that's more logical to me.

2. Is parameter order important when querying database in general? Some performance concern or something?

3. Is there a specific order to be maintained in case of other databases like DB2, Sqlite etc?

Update: I got rid of ? and included proper names with and without @. The order is really important. In both cases only when WHERE clause parameters was mentioned last, actual update happened. To make matter worse, in complex queries, its hard to know ourselves which order is Access expecting, and in all situations where order is changed, the query doesnt do its intended duty with no warning/error!!

Answer 1

Within Access, an ADODB.Command object ignores parameter names. In fact I can refer to a parameter using a bogus name (which doesn't even exist in the SQL statement) and ADO doesn't care. All it seems to care about is that you supply parameter values in the exact same order as those parameters appear in the SQL statement. BTW, that is also what happens if I build the SQL statement with ? place-holders instead of named parameters.

While I realize that your question is about c# and OleDbCommand, it looks to me like Dot.Net's OleDbCommand may be operating the same as Access' ADODB.Command. Unfortunately, I don't know Dot.Net ... but that is my hunch. :-)

Answer 2

The order is important because of the use of ? placeholders in the command string.

If you want to list the parameters in any order, it's best to use named parameters, such as @word, @sentence, etc.

condb.Open();
OleDbCommand dbcom = new OleDbCommand("UPDATE Word SET word=@word,sentence=@sentence,mp3=@mp3 WHERE id=@id AND exercise_id=@exercise_id", condb);
dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("@id", wd.ID);
dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("@exercise_id", wd.ExID);
dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("@word", wd.Name);
dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("@sentence", wd.Sentence);
dbcom.Parameters.AddWithValue("@mp3", wd.Mp3);                         

Answer 3

I have been doing some tests with using OleDbCommand and its parameters collection against an Access DB. The ordering of parameters is of course necessary, since this is a limitation of the OLE DB .NET provider. But there is a problem that you can encounter when using question marks as place holders.

Say you have a query ("stored procedure") in your Access DB that looks like this, very simplified here:

parameters
  prmFirstNumber Long,
  prmSecondNumber Long;
select
  fullName
from
  tblPersons
where 
  numberOfCars < prmFirstNumber And
  numberOfPets < prmSecondNumber And
  numberOfBooks beteween prmFirstNumber And prmSecondNumber

Here you see that simply changing to question marks would break the query.

I have found though, as a solution to this, that you can actually use names for parameters. So you can let the query above remain as it is. You just have to use the same order when you run the query. Like in this case, you first add the parameter prmFirstNumber and then prmSecondNumber, and then you run the query.

When reusing parameters, i.e. executing a query more than once and setting new values for the parameters each time, one must call the prepare method of the command object right after having defined the parameters. There are some details there that need to be fulfilled too, look at the documentation for "prepare". Not calling prepare causes strange behaviour without error messages which can corrupt your database or cause wrong information to be presented to users.

I can add also that when queries are stored in the Access DB with parameters specified, like in my example above, then the ordering of the parameters is unambiguously defined by the parameters-section.

I also made a routine, "retrieveDeclaredJetParametersInOrder", which automatically populates an OleDbCommand object with those named parameters, in the correct order. So my code can look like this:

Dim cmd As New OleDbCommand("qryInAccessDB", Conn)
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure
Conn.Open()
retrieveDeclaredJetParametersInOrder(cmd)
cmd.Parameters("prmOneOfTheParametersPerhapsTheLastOneDeclared").Value = 1
cmd.Parameters("prmAnotherone").Value = 20
cmd.Parameters("prmYetAnotherPerhapsTheFirstOneDeclared").Value = 300
cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()
Conn.Close()

So, as you see, I can handle it as if parameters are named, and never have to bother with their ordering.

The retrieveDeclaredJetParametersInOrder of course adds extra time to execution, since it involves an extra call to the DB, where it retrieves the SQL-text and then parses out the parameter names and types.