Question

I have a table

project issues  updated
    1   1   2009-09-03
    1   2   2009-09-08
    2   1   2009-09-12
    2   2   2009-09-01

and I would like to sort so that the projects are sorted in descending order so that the project with the latest updated issue is first etc., but all issues of a project are kept together and the issues are in ascending order within the project based on issue number

the result should be:

project issues  updated
   2    1   2009-09-12
   2    2   2009-09-01
   1    1   2009-09-03
   1    2   2009-09-08

Answer 1

I think this would work (sorry, no mysql at hand, so I just tested on sqlite…):

select t.project, t.issues, t.updated from t
join (select project, max(updated) as dat
      from t group by project) as t1
  on (t.project = t1.project)
order by t1.dat desc, t.issues asc