Question

ORDER BY a Column with Numeric Values

Asked by: DanielSKim

I have a column that stores suite/apartment numbers. This is data that is imported to our local database, so I don't have control over validating the data. The data that the column holds sometimes is a number, text, or a combination of the two, such as "201", "12A", or "SUITE 220".

Is there any way to have this ordered numerically, when appropriate, such as:

1,2,3,11,24, instead of 1,11,2,24,3
12A, 22A, 111A instead of 111A, 12A, 22A
SUITE 10, SUITE 20, SUITE 110, instead of SUITE 10, SUITE 110, SUITE 20

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Asked On
2006-11-06 at 17:26:52ID22051216
Tags

numeric

,

order

,

values

Topic

MS SQL Server

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: QPRPosted on 2006-11-06 at 17:36:41ID: 17886357

Not to my knowledge. Your column is a varchar and will therefore order 1-0,a-z

 

by: nmcdermaidPosted on 2006-11-06 at 17:47:19ID: 17886396

You basically need to extract the numeric portion out of the data and order it that way.

You have two options:

1. Have a humungous CASE statement which extracts the numeric portion on the fly and orders by it.. you need to have an option for every   single format that that the data is entered.
2. Create a UDF that extracts the numeric part. This will simplify the code but slwo down your report.
3. Do some data cleansing on your table and load it into a new clean table, and select from the clean table.

I recommend option 3 but you might have some constraints on what you can do.


To give you some ideas about option 1:

SELECT *
FROM YourTable
ORDER BY

CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC(ApartmentNumber) =1 THEN CONVERT(INT,ApartmentNumber) ELSE 0 END,
ApartmentNumber


What this does is has two ordering criteria.

It first orders by the apartment number if it is totally numeric.
If the apartment number is not totally numeric it orders by the apartment number alphabetically.

This does not do what you requested but it gives you an idea of the complexity required if you want to try and do this on the fly.

 

by: aneeshattingalPosted on 2006-11-06 at 18:37:46ID: 17886562

Hi DanielSKim,

SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO


ALTER   function dbo.fnExtractNumeric (
@string varchar(1000)
) returns int
AS
BEGIN

    DECLARE @newstring varchar(1000)
    DECLARE @retVal int
    declare @num int
    select @newstring = ''
    select @num = 1
   
    while @num < len(@string)+1
    begin
   
        if Substring(@string, @num, 1) >= '0' and Substring(@string, @num, 1) <= '9'
             set @newstring = @newstring + Substring(@string, @num, 1)
        ELSE
                     set @newstring = @newstring + ASCII(Substring(@string, @num, 1))
        set @num = @num + 1
    end
    SELECT @RetVal = @newstring
    RETURN (@newstring)  --(cast @newstring  as int)
END


GO
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF
GO
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
GO



ALTER function fn_SortCSVString(
@CSVString     varchar(8000)
)
returns varchar(1000)
as
/*
select dbo.fn_SortCSVString('1,11,2,24,3')
*/

begin
    declare @s  varchar(1000)
    declare @tbl table (s varchar(100))
    declare @i int , @j int
    select     @i = 1
    while @i <= len(@CSVString)
    begin
        select    @j = charindex(',', @CSVString, @i)
        if @j = 0
        begin
            select    @j = len(@CSVString) + 1
        end
        insert    @tbl
        select substring(@CSVString, @i, @j - @i)
        select    @i = @j + 1
    end
    DECLARE @tbl2 TABLE (S varchar(1000))
    INSERT INTO @tbl2(S)
    SELECT S
        FROM @tbl
    ORDER BY dbo.fnExtractNumeric(S)

    SELECT @S = COALESCE(@s+',','')+S
        FROM @tbl2
    RETURN( @S)


end
GO

select dbo.fn_SortCSVString('1,11,2,24,3')


Cheers!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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