Question

I’m trying to create an SQL query that will order the results by a version number (e.g. 1.1, 4.5.10, etc.)

Here’s what I tried:

SELECT * FROM Requirements      WHERE Requirements.Release NOT LIKE '%Obsolete%'      ORDER BY Requirements.ReqNum 

Now, the ReqNum field is a string field and unfortunately I can’t change it to a float or something like that because I have requirement numbers like 162.1.11.

When I get the results back, I’ll get ordering like this:

1.1 1.10 1.11 1.3 

How can I write a query that will sort by lexicographic order?

… or,

How can I correctly sort the data?

Thanks for the input in advance!

Answer 1

For best results, refactor version number storage so that each section has it’s own column: MajorVersion, MinorVersion, Revision, Build. Then the ordering problem suddenly becomes trivial. You can also build a computed column for easy retrieval of the full string.