Library sort order (was Re: SQL command speed)

Sorry about the subject: I meant to change it on the last one.

As usual, 5 minutes after posting, I came up with a solution, at least
for my limited case of ignoring an inital 'The ':

SELECT InstName FROM Institutions ORDER BY CASE WHEN
strpos(InstName,'The ') = 1 THEN ltrim(InstName,'The ') ELSE
InstName END;

Note that this requires 7.0, since 6.X won't allow a CASE node in the
ORDER BY position.

Ross

On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 03:39:09PM -0500, Ross J. Reedstrom wrote:
> Hey crew:
> I've got a relatively simple SQL problem. In a db backed web site
> we're building, I'd like to fill a dropdown box with the contents of a
> validation table, in this case research institutions. I want to sort them
> alphabetically, but using "library rules": i.e. skip inital articles,
> since we've a few 'The University of Foo" and "The Johns Hopkins
> University", for example.
> 
> I thought I had it with this SQL:
> 
> SELECT InstName from Institutions ORDER BY ltrim (InstName, 'The');
> 
> Looked good, until I found 'Texas A&M University' sorting below York.
> 
> Seems ltrim() removes inital charaters from the set of charaters, not
> inital strings, so I was sorting on 'xas A&M University'
> 
> Anyone have some magic solution for this?
> 
> Ross
> -- 
> Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu> 
> NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
> Computer and Information Technology Institute
> Rice University, 6100 S. Main St.,  Houston, TX 77005
>