Question

I’m a bit rusty with MySQL. I need some help figure out an order by.

I need it to be ordered by type, then by group with the highest group row date, and then each group ordered by date.
I need to make a query that will order a group rows by the highest date. I then need each group to be ordered by the highest date within that group. There is just one more thing. All rows a a type, but each group row has the same type.

Here is a visual representation of an unorganized table

| DATE | GROUP | TYPE |
-----------------------
| 2007 |     2 |    1 |
| 2008 |     3 |    2 |
| 2005 |     3 |    1 |
| 2004 |     2 |    1 |
| 2003 |     3 |    1 |
| 2012 |     3 |    2 |
| 2011 |     1 |    3 |

This organized:

| DATE | GROUP | TYPE |
-----------------------
| 2007 |     2 |    1 |
| 2004 |     2 |    1 |
| 2005 |     3 |    1 |
| 2003 |     3 |    1 |
| 2012 |     3 |    2 |
| 2008 |     3 |    2 |
| 2011 |     1 |    3 |

I’ve tried ordering it by type, group, than date, but this is inaccurate. I’m not entirely sure.

Here is a sample set of data:

| ID |               SET |             BLOCK | SHORTNAME | RELEASEDATE | SETTYPE |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|  1 | Return to Ravnica | Return to Ravnica |       rtr |  2012-09-29 |       1 |
|  2 |         Gatecrash | Return to Ravnica |      NULL |  2013-02-01 |       1 |
|  3 |      Dragons Maze | Return to Ravnica |      NULL |  2013-05-03 |       1 |
|  4 |   Avacyn Restored |         Innistrad |       avr |  2012-05-04 |       1 |
|  5 |    Dark Ascension |         Innistrad |       dka |  2012-02-03 |       1 |
|  6 |         Innistrad |         Innistrad |       isd |  2011-09-30 |       1 |
|  7 |      New Phyrexia | Scars of Mirrodin |       nph |  2011-05-13 |       1 |
|  8 | Mirrodin Besieged | Scars of Mirrodin |       mbs |  2011-02-04 |       1 |
|  9 | Scars of Mirrodin | Scars of Mirrodin |       som |  2010-10-01 |       1 |

Group is block, type is settype, date is release date.

I need all block rows ordered by date within the block, each set of block rows ordered by highest date row within that block, and settype.

Answer 1

Derive the row set of highest dates per block from your table, then join it back to your table to use the highest dates in the ORDER BY clause:

SELECT
  t.*
FROM atable t
INNER JOIN (
  SELECT
    Block,
    MAX(ReleaseDate) AS HighestDate
  FROM atable
  GROUP BY Block
) s ON s.Block = t.Block
ORDER BY
  s.HighestDate,
  t.SetType,
  t.Block,
  t.ReleaseDate
;