Question

I have a web page which has news data in one table.

In many cases I use following SQL:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY insertDate DESC

to order.

ID|priority|insertDate
1 |NULL    |2012-09-16
2 |NULL    |2012-09-17
3 |NULL    |2012-09-18
5 |NULL    |2012-09-19
5 |NULL    |2012-09-20
4 |1       |2010-05-10 - this is way back in the future

But user wants to prioritize 1 news. And if I use

 SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY priority ASC ,insertDate DESC

It doesn’t work correctly, how do I must use ORDER to get result

ID|priority|insertDate
4 |1       |2010-05-10
1 |NULL    |2012-09-16
2 |NULL    |2012-09-17
3 |NULL    |2012-09-18
5 |NULL    |2012-09-19
5 |NULL    |2012-09-20

Answer 1

Use coalesce to set a valid value to Null priority rows:

SELECT * 
FROM table 
ORDER BY 
   coalesce(priority,0) ASC ,
   insertDate DESC

Edited

Re-reading your question I see that right order is DESC and not ASC:

   coalesce(priority,0) DESC ,

Also, notice @yshavit comment. To improve performance you can split query in two selects first one with not null values.

Remember than when you create this new field you can set to it a default value, this will avoid coalesce and union:

data_type [NOT NULL | NULL] [DEFAULT default_value]