sort results by column not row

Question

is it possible in SQL to sort by column and not by row? i do not need a basic ORDER BY statement, i know how those work (ie: order by column1, column2, etc).

basic

Answer 1

Here is relatively simple way to sort columns. If you first unpivot, sort and pivot your data, you will get sorted columns.

Here is Sql Fiddle with example.

-- Assign arbitrary numbers to records
-- You might skip this part if you have unique column
-- in which case you should replace RecordNumber with this ID
; with numbered as
(
  select *,
         row_number() over (order by (select null)) RecordNumber
    from test
),
-- Generate order by
-- For all the columns in record.
-- Rn will always be in range
-- 1..NumberOfColumns
-- Order is done on unpivoted data
ordered as
(
  select *,
         row_number() over (partition by RecordNumber
                            order by v desc) rn
    from numbered
 -- list all the columns here
 -- v is for value
 -- c is for column
 unpivot (v for c in (c1, c2, c3)) u
)
-- Finally return the data in original layout
select RecordNumber,
       [1] c1,
       [2] c2,
       [3] c3
  from 
  (
    -- Only the columns needed by the query
    -- Pivot will not play nice even if you
    -- Select only subset of columns in
    -- outer query
    select RecordNumber,
           v,
           Rn
      from ordered
  ) o
 -- Get value for row numbers 1..NumberOfColumns
 pivot (min(v) for Rn in ([1], [2], [3])) p

You might want to add header rows so you would know which value come from which column. To do this I would add a column identifying header/row, union all to o to get corresponding headers and order by which would ensure that these two rows stay together:

  (
    select RecordNumber,
           v,
           Rn,
           1 HdrRow
      from ordered
     union all
    select RecordNumber,
           c,    -- Column name is in c
           Rn,
           0 HdrRow
      from ordered
  ) o
    ...
  order by RecordNumber, HdrRow