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

There's an another option. You can calculate the result column by needed logic and cover the select by external one with ordering by your column. In this case the code will be the following:

select ID, x.Date1, x.Date2
from
(
    select
        ID,
        Date1,
        Date2, 
        SortColumn = case when Date1 < Date2 then Date1 else Date2 end
    from YourTable
) x
order by x.SortColumn

The benefit of this solution is that you can add necessary filtering queries (in the inner select) and still the indexes will be useful.