title: Benefits Of Using SQL Ordinal Position Notation?
body: <h2>Background Information</h2>
  <p>Ordinal position notation, AKA ordinals, is column shorthand based on the column order in the list of columns in the <code>SELECT</code> clause, instead of either the column name or column alias.  Commonly supported in the <code>ORDER BY</code> clause, some databases (MySQL 3.23+, PostgreSQL 8.0+) support the syntax for the <code>GROUP BY</code> clause as well.</p>
  <p>Here's an example of using Ordinals:</p>
  <pre><code>GROUP BY 1, 2
  ORDER BY 1, 2
  </code></pre>
  <p>It's not good to use because it makes the query brittle - if the column order changes, the ordinals need to be updated or your query won't return what you thought it would.  Very likely, you'd get an error when used in the <code>GROUP BY</code> if the columns at those locations are wrapped within aggregates...</p>
  <h2>The Question</h2>
  <p>The only benefit I can think of is less data to send over the wire, if you aren't using stored procedures or functions (which make ordinal usage moot, to me anyways).  Are there any other benefits I'm missing?</p>