Question

I have an EAV table in SQL which as usual has several records for each ID. Each of these records has a numerical value in a column called ‘weight’ and I’m trying to sort this table so that for each ID the records are ranked in descending order of weight. This is going to be a one off process because I intend to make sure that data is sorted when it goes into the table in future.

Also is the normal protocol for doing something like this to SELECT all of the data, sort it the way you want, and then use the REPLACE command to replace the old data in the table?

I know that I can do this for one id by doing:

SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE id = 'X' ORDER BY weight DESC

but I need to somehow do this for each id in my table. How is this normally done?

Answer 1

you will ALWAYS return the data in the order you wish in this case:

SELECT * from theTable order by  id, weight desc

you do not store the data in any particular order. (even if you try this will not matter).