More MySQL 'ORDER BY' Woes

[Tim Lodge]

I read about the difficulties Marjolein had with 'ORDER BY' yesterday, only to run into a similar problem of my own this morning! I just happened to check the small ads page at http://www.drascombe-association.org.uk/smallads.htm and found that it wasn't showing any results from the database. After an hour or so of hair-tearing I discovered that I could get the results to display again by removing the 'ORDER BY' statement from the following query:

 $Query = "SELECT *, DATE_FORMAT(adate, '%D %M %Y') AS displaydate 
	 FROM $TableName1 AS t1, $TableName2 AS t2 
	 WHERE t1.boattype = t2.type AND t1.sold='no' AND t1.adate >= '$LastDanDate' 
	 ORDER BY t1.adate DESC";

I'm pleased to have got it working again, but it's less than ideal that the adverts now appear in more or less random order. I've also had to amend most of the admin pages in the same way.

I suspect strongly - and I'm awaiting confirmation - that my hosting provider has done a version upgrade. The old pages still work on my test server, which is running MySQL 3.23.49, while the production server is running MySQL 4.1.18.

It seems to be the fact that I'm querying more than one table which breaks it. Can anyone spot a problem with my query, or suggest a workaround?