Re: Sql ORDER BY and ASC/DESC question

[Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>]

Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> If you're not concerned with the planner being able to find indexes to satisfy
> these orderings (ie, you don't mind always doing a sort) you could do
> something like:

> ORDER BY 
>  CASE ? 
>  WHEN 1 THEN name ASC
>  WHEN 2 THEN name DESC
>  WHEN 3 THEN height ASC
>  WHEN 4 THEN height DESC
>  ELSE id ASC
>  END

Uh, no, putting the ASC/DESC decoration inside a CASE like that is not
gonna work --- it's only allowed at the top level of an ORDER BY clause.
For numerical sort keys you can cheat by using "-x" in place of
"x DESC", but I'm not aware of any equivalent hack for text keys.

			regards, tom lane