Question

Using SQL Server 2008…

I’m having some troubles in trying to order my rows in a specific order that I would like them to be ordered by. I’ve found a few examples that use the ORDER BY CASE clause, but am unsure whether using this method will produce the result that I want it to, thus I come to the community!

Here’s what I have:

First, I select, if it exists, a distinct year that is equal to the current year:

IF EXISTS(SELECT DISTINCT [Year]
FROM Assessment WHERE ProjectCode = @ProjectCode AND [Year] = DATENAME(YEAR, GETDATE()))

SELECT DISTINCT [Year]
FROM Assessment WHERE ProjectCode = @ProjectCode

But, then I find some confusion in ordering the results. I’d like to set the current year to the first row returned using the ORDER BY clause, then order the rest of the returned years in a descending order, here’s what I have so far:

ORDER BY (CASE WHEN [Year] = (DATENAME(YEAR, GETDATE())) THEN 1
          ELSE 100 END) ASC, [Year] desc

Next, if the current year is not contained in the query, select each year and order by year descending.

    ELSE
SELECT DISTINCT [Year]
FROM Assessment WHERE ProjectCode = @ProjectCode
ORDER BY [Year] desc

Thanks, in advance!

Answer 1

You’re question isn’t very clear because you don’t specify what is broken or where you’re having issues. From what I gather, however, you don’t need an IF/ELSE. Instead you could do something like …

SELECT DISTINCT [Year],  
        CASE [Year] 
            WHEN DATENAME(Year, GETDATE()) THEN 9999
            ELSE [Year] END  AS GarbageSoDistinctWorks
FROM Assessment 
WHERE ProjectCode = @ProjectCode
ORDER BY
        CASE [Year] 
            WHEN DATENAME(Year, GETDATE()) THEN 9999
            ELSE [Year] END  DESC 

FYI … i added the case to the select list as a throw away column to avoid the error I assume you’re getting.. There are other ways, like a derived table, but for now this should work..

Msg 145, Level 15, State 1, Line 2
ORDER BY items must appear in the select list if SELECT DISTINCT is specified.

HTH,
-eric