Question

I have a column named MR which is a varchar. When I run a query with an ORDER BY it doesn’t seem to be ordered correctly.

select MR, LName, FName from users 
  where MR between 'MR20001' and 'MR20002' 
  order by MR

Results:

MR20001   | LINA  | MARY
MR200011  | TEST  | CASE
MR20002   | KO    | MIKE

Why does MR200011 show before MR20002?

Answer 1

Try casting it,

select MR, LName, FName 
from users 
where MR between 'MR20001' and 'MR20002' 
order by CAST(REPLACE(MR, 'MR', '') AS INT)

• SQLFiddle Demo