Can you order by label of select list in tabular form?

Question

Imagine this scenario, you have an updateable tabular report based on a query like the following:
select emp_id
      ,ename
      ,dept_id
from employeesAnd you define the dept_id column as a query based lov, so you see a select list for departments.
select dept_name d
      ,dept_id   r
from departments
order by 1However if the user chooses to order by the department column by clicking on the heading to sort, they see the following order (note the H between A & B):
Accounting
Human Resources
BiodiversityWhich is because of the ID not being in the same order as the label
1 - Accounting
3 - Biodiversity
2 - Human ResourcesHow can I allow the user to order by the lov based column, but have it order by the label and not the reference id?
A colleague reckons she fought and lost this battle. Surely this must be a common issue? I can't seem to find any related questions.
Cheers,
ScottWe.

Answer 1

>
Option B: Convert to manual tabular form. Here is a sample of the report query (leave column display as at "standard report column").
select e. emp_id
      ,e.ename
      ,'<input type="hidden" value="'||d.dept_name||'" />'||APEX_ITEM.SELECT_LIST_FROM_QUERY(3,e.dept_id,'select dept_name ,dept_id  from departments order by 1') dept
from employees e, departments d
where e.dept_id = d.dept_idI recently had problems when I had to apply a script to a page that used this technique: basically too many <tt>input</tt>s. Never understood why this element is used&mdash;guess it's the fact that it's "hidden". Anyway, an HTML comment works as well and is more out of the way:
select e.empno
      ,e.ename
      ,'<!-- '||d.dname||' -->'||APEX_ITEM.SELECT_LIST_FROM_QUERY(3,e.deptno,'select dept_name ,dept_id  from departments order by 1') dept
from emp e, dept d
where e.deptno = d.deptno