Question

I have a table of ordered data like this

ID   ORDER
12     1
13     2
14     3
15     4
...
200    189
201    190
...

I would like to be able to update a few or all of their “order”s.
How should I do that?

For example, I might switch the ordering between ID=12 and ID=13 so it’d go like

ID   ORDER
12     2
13     1
14     3
15     4
...

This would just be a simple UPDATE TABLE SET ORDER=1 WHERE ID=13 SET ORDER=2 WHERE ID=12

But if I wanted to move ID=200 all the way to the top,..

ID   ORDER
12     2
13     3
14     4
15     5
...
200    190
201    1
...  

then everything would have to be updated..? How do I do that? Is there a better way? Decimals?

edit: I’m using MSSQL btw

edit:clarification of use: I have a table with a long list of URL links, and the order of those links matter. I want to be able to rearrange their order. I have a web page that retrieves that list from the db, displays the names as an unordered-list, and I can rearrange the items on that list. I’m stuck on how to get the newly ordered list’s order updated into the database.

Answer 1

If you want to move an item up to the top, and update the order of all the other in a single statment, you can do the following:

UPDATE MyTable
SET    Order = (CASE Order WHEN 190 THEN 1
                           ELSE Order + 1
                           END)
WHERE  Order BETWEEN 1 AND 190