Question

I have a SQL Report driven by a query that sorts it in ascending order of some numerical value. But the user wants two particular rows of data, which happen to appear at different ordinal positions in the query results, to be juxtaposed. Is there a way to do this, either through the report’s driving SQL or the .rdl file itself?

Answer 1

Just add another calculated expression as the first order by Expression, which puts those two values ahead of all others…

Select [Other stuff]
From Table
Order By Case colName 
          When first_val then 0
          When second_val then 0
          else 1 End,
      colName 

or, EDIT (to include @astander’s suggestion)

Select [Other stuff]
From Table
Order By Case 
         When colName In (first_Val, second_Val)
         Then 0 else 1 End,
      colName 

and another Edit, to put second_val immediately after first_Val…

Select [Other stuff]
From Table
Order By Case 
         When colName < first_Val And colName <> secondVal Then 0
         When colName = first_Val Then 1
         When colName = secondVal Then 2 
         Else 3 End,
      colName