CASE in an order by clause?

Question

Can I use a case statement in an order by clause to acheive the following?
I have set up a parameter (:p_order) and placed it in a case statement in my order by clause. The idea is that the user will select a value from a LoV in the report and then dependant upon which one they picked, it will order by their selection. The problem I'm hitting is that the CASE statement seems to want to return an actual value instead of just returning the alias name to complete the order by clause. Here is the syntax I'm using:
ORDER BY
CASE WHEN :p_order = 'INVOICE NUMBER' THEN INVOICE_NUMBER
WHEN :p_order = 'INVOICE DATE' THEN INVOICE_DATE
     WHEN :p_order = 'VENDOR' THEN VENDOR_NAME
WHEN :p_order = 'CHECK NUMBER' THEN CHECK_NUMBER
WHEN :p_order = 'CHECK DATE' THEN CHECK_DATE
WHEN :p_order = 'CHECK AMOUNT' THEN CHECK_AMOUNT
WHEN :p_order = 'DOA CHECK NUMBER' THEN DOA_CHECK_NUMBER
WHEN :p_order = 'DOA CHECK DATE' THEN DOA_CHECK_DATE
WHEN :p_order = 'DOA CHECK AMOUNT' THEN DOA_CHECK_AMOUNT
END
Any ideas? How can I force the case statement to return the alias name instead of a value or is that defiance in the face of what case is? Thanks!
Steve

Answer 1

Note, however, that if you want to dynamically choose the ORDER, you have to use dynamic SQL, not static SQL.
Justin
Distributed Database Consulting, Inc.
http://www.ddbcinc.com/askDDBC