Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 04-19-2004, 05:48 AM   #1 (permalink)
Pure Chewing Satisfaction
 
Moskie's Avatar
 
Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?
[SQL] ORDER BY question

As part of an assignment, I've been asked to sort and display some information using different sort methods. One of the sort methods I'm assigned is to sort the information directly in the SQL statement. That normally would be extremely simply, but it seems particularly complicated in this situation.

I have a table called Employee, which has a column called "Name". Names in this column are in the form "<FirstName><space><LastName>". Such as "Joe Smith". The problem is that I am supposed to sort by Employee's last name, which means I can't just do "ORDER BY Name". Is there some kinky thing I can put in the ORDER BY clause to get this sorted properly?

It also crossed my mind that I could write a stored procedure that would produce a record's last name for me, but I'm not sure how to do that... my string-manipulation-within-SQL skills are not that great, and I'm not even sure if it can be done.

Any thoughts on how to do this?


edit: I should add that I'm doing this with an MBD file in a Visual Studio .Net 2003 VB application.
__________________
Greetings and salutations.

Last edited by Moskie; 04-19-2004 at 05:58 AM..
Moskie is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 10:06 AM   #2 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: RI
Are you restricted to having the name all together? Or can you make a first/last name?
Sorry I got limited knowledge of SQL
Fallon is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 11:19 AM   #3 (permalink)
Rookie
 
cliche's Avatar
 
Location: Oxford, UK
Can you not ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Name FROM LOCATE(' ',Name)) or similar? (I'm aware that this includes the space).
I don't have an SQL set up to see if that would work but might be worth a try. Alternatively ORDER BY SUBSTRING(Name, LOCATE(' ',Name)).
__________________
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage (1912 - 1992)
cliche is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 11:31 AM   #4 (permalink)
 
KnifeMissile's Avatar
 
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
Unfortunately, I don't know SQL well enough to answer your literal question (but cliche looks like he's onto something) but let me ask you an obvious question.

Is there a particular reason why first name and surname don't have their own columns? Usually, this is the case and, in this case, sorting by surname is easy.
Is this difficulty, in fact, part of the assignment?
KnifeMissile is offline  
Old 04-19-2004, 01:02 PM   #5 (permalink)
Pure Chewing Satisfaction
 
Moskie's Avatar
 
Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?
Thanks guys, I got a similar idea to cliche's working. Wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

And I do think that was the purpose of it KnifeMissile... at least I hope so. If he says I could have just split it up into two columns, i'll be pissed!
__________________
Greetings and salutations.
Moskie is offline  
Old 04-20-2004, 01:14 AM   #6 (permalink)
In Your Dreams
 
Latch's Avatar
 
Location: City of Lights
Just for general knowledge, what'd you end up with (that worked)?

Thanks.
Latch is offline  
Old 04-20-2004, 05:18 AM   #7 (permalink)
Pure Chewing Satisfaction
 
Moskie's Avatar
 
Location: can i use bbcode [i]here[/i]?
My solution was:

Code:
SELECT Name FROM Employee ORDER BY MID(Name,INSTR(Name, ' ')+1)
INSTR returns the index of the first space in Name. Using that index, I use MID to get everything after that location, which is the last name. ORDER BY that result, and you got it sorted.

I'm not sure how you'd do this on a different (non-MSAccess) database, but I think most databases have equivalent functions to use.
__________________
Greetings and salutations.
Moskie is offline  
Old 04-20-2004, 05:25 AM   #8 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: Belgium
if you normalized your table you wouldn't have to deal with that kind of problem
__________________
Let's GO
Cuball is offline  
 

Tags
order, question, sql


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 12:14 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360