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

Are you using SELECT *? If so, stop doing that. If you know you want them listed that way, then write:

SELECT [column 3], [column 1], [column 2] FROM dbo.table;

If you mean you want to sort within those columns, I'm not sure how meaningful that would be. But I guess you could do something like:

DECLARE @x TABLE(c1 INT, c2 INT, c3 INT);

INSERT @x(c1,c2,c3) SELECT 2,1,3
UNION ALL SELECT 3,4,5
UNION ALL SELECT 5,4,3
UNION ALL SELECT 3,1,2
UNION ALL SELECT 3,3,3
UNION ALL SELECT 3,4,3
UNION ALL SELECT 4,3,4;

SELECT c1 = CASE
  WHEN c1 >= c2 AND c1 >= c3 THEN c1
  WHEN c2 >= c1 AND c2 >= c3 THEN c2
  ELSE c3 END,
c2 = CASE 
  WHEN c1 >= c2 AND c1 >= c3 THEN 
    CASE WHEN c2 >= c3 THEN c2 ELSE c3 END
  WHEN c2 >= c1 AND c2 >= c3 THEN
    CASE WHEN c1 >= c3 THEN c1 ELSE c3 END
  ELSE
    CASE WHEN c1 >= c2 THEN c1 ELSE c2 END
  END,
c3 = CASE
  WHEN c1 <= c2 AND c1 <= c3 THEN c1
  WHEN c2 <= c1 AND c2 <= c3 THEN c2
  ELSE c3 END
FROM @x;

Results:

c1   c2   c3
---- ---- ----
3    2    1
5    4    3
5    4    3
3    2    1
3    3    3
4    3    3
4    4    3