Re: Complex ORDER BY clauses

Daniel! You handed out a fish with no reference to acquiring fishing skills! Getting soft in your old age?

• mcs "Daniel Morgan" <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu> wrote in message news:1068748539.612491_at_yasure...
  > Dave Rudolf wrote:
  >
  > >Hi all,
  > >
  > >Suppose that I have a column in a table, and I want to sort it so that
  > >certain values come first, but the sorting is not lexographical. For
  > >example, if I have a rediculously simple table, that has only one column,
  > >like so:
  > >
  > >'A'
  > >'B'
  > >'C'
  > >'D'
  > >'E'
  > >
  > >I want to sort the table so that Bs and Es come first, like so:
  > >
  > >'B'
  > >'E'
  > >'A'
  > >'C'
  > >'D'
  > >
  > >Is there some way to do such a thing?
  > >
  > >
  > >
  > >Dave
  > >
  > >
  > >
  > SELECT col
  > FROM table
  > ORDER BY decode(col, 'B', 1, 'E', 2, 'A', 3, 'C', 4, 'D', 5, 999);
  >
  > --
  > Daniel Morgan
  > http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
  > http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
  > damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
  > (replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)
  >