Question

I have a table with an id as the primary key, and a description as another field.

I want to first select the records that have the id<=4, sorted by description, then I want all the other records (id>4), sorted by description. Can’t get there!

Answer 1

You may want to use an id <= 4 expression in your ORDER BY clause:

SELECT * FROM your_table ORDER BY id <= 4 DESC, description;

Test case (using MySQL):

CREATE TABLE your_table (id int, description varchar(50));

INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (1, 'c');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (2, 'a');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (3, 'z');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (4, 'b');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (5, 'g');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (6, 'o');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (7, 'c');
INSERT INTO your_table VALUES (8, 'p');

Result:

+------+-------------+
| id   | description |
+------+-------------+
|    2 | a           |
|    4 | b           |
|    1 | c           |
|    3 | z           |
|    7 | c           |
|    5 | g           |
|    6 | o           |
|    8 | p           |
+------+-------------+
8 rows in set (0.00 sec)

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