> Why won't the ORDER BY work for him?

If I understand it right - he wants it to be ordered by an arbitrary sort
order using record ID's.

It is not possible to do this within a database query on a single table
unless that table already has a "order" field of some kind.  But you might
want several different "orders" - so this may not be want you want either.
 Or you may not be able to change the schema of the original table.

What you would need to do is to create a second table.  This would have
the record key (ID) and an "order" field.  The order field would contain
your sequence - 1, 2, 3, 4 - and your ID field would contain 56,90,24,16
(for example).

You would then join this "ordering" table to the main table - but use an
ORDER BY clause on the ORDER field in your ordering table.

The question is a dead giveaway - you cannot "order by a list" in SQL.


The ORDER BY clause is not used to specifically state how you want to
order things.  It is used to indicate which fields in the database the
records should be ordered by.  Then you sort ascending or descending
according to the collation type on the database/table.  Generally this
means up or down alphanumerically.


Gary Menzel
Web Development Manager
IT Operations Brisbane -+- ABN AMRO Morgans Limited
Level 29, 123 Eagle Street BRISBANE QLD 4000
PH: 07 333 44 828  FX:  07 3834 0828


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