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 think when you want to sort on both fields of date1 and date2, you should have both of them in the ORDER BY part, like this:

SELECT *
FROM aTable
ORDER BY 
    CASE WHEN date1 < date2 THEN date1 
    ELSE date2 END, 
    CASE WHEN date1 < date2 THEN date2 
    ELSE date1 END

Result can be like this:

date1      | date2      
-----------+------------
2015-04-25 | 2015-04-21
2015-04-26 | 2015-04-21
2015-04-25 | 2015-04-22
2015-04-22 | 2015-04-26

---

To have a prefect result with Null values use:

SELECT *
FROM aTable
ORDER BY 
    CASE 
        WHEN date1 IS NULL THEN NULL
        WHEN date1 < date2 THEN date1 
    ELSE date2 END 
    ,CASE 
        WHEN date2 IS NULL THEN date1
        WHEN date1 IS NULL THEN date2
        WHEN date1 < date2 THEN date2 
    ELSE date1 END

Results will be like this:

date1      | date2      
-----------+------------
NULL       | NULL
NULL       | 2015-04-22
2015-04-26 | NULL
2015-04-25 | 2015-04-21
2015-04-26 | 2015-04-21
2015-04-25 | 2015-04-22