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Dynamically Create a Sortable Column

Dynamically Create a Sortable Column

Sometimes you need your resultset sorted a particular way and using the primary key doesn’t accomplish what you need. One way to get around this is to create a sortable column dynamically in your query using the CASE function.

SELECT name, title, priority =(CASE titlewhen 'President' then 1 when 'Vice President' then 2 when'Secretary' then 3when 'Treasurer' then 4end)FROM executiveORDER BY priority

In this example, I give each title a priority and sort by it. This could have been accomplished using a second table and joining to it but why do that if you don’t need to?

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