title: Default sort-ordering in MySQL (ALTER TABLE ... ORDER BY ...;)
body: <p>Assume that the default ordering of a MySQL-table (ISAM) is changed by executing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ALTER TABLE tablename ORDER BY columnname ASC;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From now on, am I <b>guaranteed</b> to obtain records retrieved from the table in the order of "columnname ASC" assuming no "ORDER BY" is specified in my queries (i.e. "SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE ... LIMIT 10;")?</p>
  
  <p>Are there any corner-cases that I should be aware of?</p>
  
  <p><b>Update #1:</b> Thanks a lot to Quassnoi who correctly pointed out that INSERTs and DELETEs messes up the ordering. This leads me to the following to extra questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What about UPDATEs? Assume that no INSERTs or DELETEs are made to the table, but only updates - will the sort order be intact?</li>
  <li>Assume that INSERTs and DELETEs are made - how do I "rebuild" the sorting again, say once a day (in this specific case the table only changes daily, so rebuilding it daily after the changes are done should still be OK!). Does REPAIR TABLE fix it, or must add do ALTER TABLE ... ORDER BY again?</li>
  </ul>