Question

I have 3 columns in my table

1. status enum(‘Completed’,’Incomplete’,’In Progress’)
2. severity enum(‘High’,’Low’,’Moderate’)
3. created datetime

Now currently i am ordering by severity ASC created DESC status DESC. which is not working right. This is how i want it to be listed.

1. Incomplete – High
2. Incomplete – moderate
3. Incomplete – low
4. In Progress – High
5. In Progress – moderate
6. In Progress – low
7. Completed – High
8. Completed – moderate
9. Completed – low

Answer 1

As well as Andomar’s solution, I’d consider having proper tables for status and severity. Not enums.

You can imply sort order from the key of these tables, but I’d probably have a “SortOrder” column for future use.Then you can JOIN the tables and order by the SortOrder.

No need repeat the CASE in every query that needs it

Edit: Simplifying Andomar’s idea…

order by
    case status
       when 'Incomplete' then 1
       when 'In Progress' then 2
       when 'Completed' then 3
    END,
    case severity
       when 'High' then 1
       when 'Moderate' then 2
       when 'Low' then 3
    END