Sort by minimum value of two columns

Question

I use SQL Server 2008 R2.

I need to sort a table by the minimal value of two columns.

The table looks like this:

ID: integer; 
Date         


        

Answer 1

I'd shift focus from how to do this to why you need this - and propose to change the schema instead. The rule of thumb is: if you need to pull stunts to access your data, there is a bad design decision.

As you've seen, this task is very untypical for SQL so, though it's possible, all the proposed methods are painfully slow in comparison to an ordinary ORDER BY.

• If you need to do this often then the minimum of the two dates must have some independent physical meaning for your application.
  • Which justifies a separate column (or maybe a column replacing one of the two) - maintained by a trigger or even manually if the meaning is independent enough for the column to possibly be neither in some cases.