CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sql-serversql-server-2000
RetroCoder
RetroCoder

Reputation: 2685

Order by Field in non-alphabetical order in SQL Server 2000

I'm trying to order items by a list of names that are not in alphabetical order. After completing the list I am trying to continue the rest in alphabetical order without the ones I initially selected.

See example:

INPUT:

print 'Results:'  
select * from Geniuses
    order by ('Charles Babbage', 
              'Albert Einstein', 
              'Adrien-Marie Legendre', 
              'Niels Henrik Abel')

then finally sort the rest in alphabetical order...

OUTPUT:

Results:
Charles Babbage ... details
Albert Einstein ...
Adrien-Marie Legendre ...
Niels Henrik Abel ...
Arthur Cayley ...
...

Upvotes: 3

Views: 5310

Answers (2)

Michael Fredrickson
Michael Fredrickson

Reputation: 37388

select * from Geniuses
order by
    -- First, order by your set order...
    case FullName
        when 'Charles Babbage' then 1
        when 'Albert Einstein' then 2
        when 'Adrien-Marie Legendre' then 3
        when 'Niels Henrik Abel' then 4
        else 5 
    end,
    -- Then do a secondary sort on FullName for everyone else.
    FullName

EDIT:

I saw your comment that it's configurable by each user. In that case, you'd have to have a FavoriteGeniuses table that tracks which user prefers which Geniuses, and then have a sort order specified in that table:

select * 
from 
    Geniuses g left join
    FavoriteGeniuses fg 
        ON fg.GeniusID = g.GeniusID 
        AND fg.UserID = @UserID
order by
    -- The higher the number, the first up on the list.
    -- This will put the NULLs (unspecified) below the favorites.
    fg.SortPriority DESC, 
    f.FullName

Upvotes: 10

aF.
aF.

Reputation: 66697

Try it like this:

select * from Geniuses
order by
   case when columnName = 'Charles Babbage' then 0
     when columnName = 'Albert Einstein' then 1
     when columnName = 'Adrien-Marie Legendre' then 2
     when columnName = 'Niels Henrik Abel' then 3
     else 4
     end,
   columName

Upvotes: 4

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