Ordering by the order of values in a SQL IN() clause

Question

I am wondering if there is away (possibly a better way) to order by the order of the values in an IN() clause.

The problem is that I have 2 queries, one that gets al

Answer 1

I just tried to do this is MS SQL Server where we do not have FIELD():

SELECT table1.id
... 
INNER JOIN
    (VALUES (10,1),(3,2),(4,3),(5,4),(7,5),(8,6),(9,7),(2,8),(6,9),(5,10)
    ) AS X(id,sortorder)
        ON X.id = table1.id
    ORDER BY X.sortorder

Note that I am allowing duplication too.

Answer 2

Give this a shot:

SELECT name, description, ...
WHERE id IN
    (SELECT id FROM table1 WHERE...)
ORDER BY
    (SELECT display_order FROM table1 WHERE...),
    (SELECT name FROM table1 WHERE...)

The WHEREs will probably take a little tweaking to get the correlated subqueries working properly, but the basic principle should be sound.

Answer 3

The IN clause describes a set of values, and sets do not have order.

Your solution with a join and then ordering on the display_order column is the most nearly correct solution; anything else is probably a DBMS-specific hack (or is doing some stuff with the OLAP functions in standard SQL). Certainly, the join is the most nearly portable solution (though generating the data with the display_order values may be problematic). Note that you may need to select the ordering columns; that used to be a requirement in standard SQL, though I believe it was relaxed as a rule a while ago (maybe as long ago as SQL-92).

Answer 4

See following how to get sorted data.

SELECT ...
  FROM ...
 WHERE zip IN (91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
   AND user.status=1
ORDER 
    BY provider.package_id DESC 
     , FIELD(zip,91709,92886,92807,...,91356)
LIMIT 10

Answer 5

SELECT ORDER_NO, DELIVERY_ADDRESS 
from IFSAPP.PURCHASE_ORDER_TAB 
where ORDER_NO in ('52000077','52000079','52000167','52000297','52000204','52000409','52000126') 
ORDER BY instr('52000077,52000079,52000167,52000297,52000204,52000409,52000126',ORDER_NO)

worked really great

Answer 6

Two solutions that spring to mind:

1. order by case id when 123 then 1 when 456 then 2 else null end asc

2. order by instr(','||id||',',',123,456,') asc

(instr() is from Oracle; maybe you have locate() or charindex() or something like that)