Sorting SQL by first two characters of fields

Question

I\'m trying to sort some data by sales person initials, and the sales rep field is 3 chars long, and is Firstname, Lastname and Account type. So, Bob Smith would be BS* and

Answer 1

I hope that you never end up with two sales reps who happen to have the same initials.

Also, sorting and filtering are two completely different things. You talk about sorting in the question title and first paragraph, but your question is about filtering. Since you can just ORDER BY on the field and it will use the first two characters anyway, I'll give you an answer for the filtering part.

You don't mention your RDBMS, but this will work in any product:

SELECT
     my_columns
FROM
     My_Table
WHERE
     sales_rep LIKE 'BS%'

If you're using a variable/parameter then:

SELECT
     my_columns
FROM
     My_Table
WHERE
     sales_rep LIKE @my_param + '%'

You can also use:

LEFT(sales_rep, 2) = 'BS'

I would stay away from:

SUBSTRING(sales_rep, 1, 2) = 'BS'

Depending on your SQL engine, it might not be smart enough to realize that it can use an index on the last one.