Interactive report - order column by other column values

Question

Hi Oracle experts,
could you please advise how to order column A by values of column B in Interactive report ?
When clicking on header of "Countries" column in order to sort it acs/desc I would like to order it by values of column "Sort_order" which stores values from 1 to 100.
The goal is to order "Countries" not alphabetically, but according to values of "Sort_order" column.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Best regards,
Konrad

Answer 1

962622 wrote:
Hi Oracle experts,Welcome to the forum: please read the FAQ and forum sticky threads (if you haven't done so already), and update your profile with a real handle instead of "962622".
When you have a problem you'll get a faster, more effective response by providing as much relevant information as possible upfront. This should include:
<li>Full APEX version
<li>Full DB/version/edition/host OS
<li>Web server architecture (EPG, OHS or APEX listener/host OS)
<li>Browser(s) and version(s) used
<li>Theme
<li>Template(s)
<li>Region/item type(s) (making particular distinction as to whether a "report" is a standard report, an interactive report, or in fact an "updateable report" (i.e. a tabular form)
With APEX we're also fortunate to have a great resource in apex.oracle.com where we can reproduce and share problems. Reproducing things there is the best way to troubleshoot most issues, especially those relating to layout and visual formatting. If you expect a detailed answer then it's appropriate for you to take on a significant part of the effort by getting as far as possible with an example of the problem on apex.oracle.com before asking for assistance with specific issues, which we can then see at first hand.
could you please advise how to order column A by values of column B in Interactive report ?
When clicking on header of "Countries" column in order to sort it acs/desc I would like to order it by values of column "Sort_order" which stores values from 1 to 100.
The goal is to order "Countries" not alphabetically, but according to values of "Sort_order" column.
Any ideas?I'm not an expert on Interactive Reports, so there may be a less brute force method using the built-in features, but here's an approach that's worked in the past.
Modify the query to generate the column as:
'<!-- '|| to_char(sort_order, '009') || ' -->' || countryi.e. prefix the country name with an HTML comment containing the required ordinal number. This won't be visible in the report, but will be considered when sorting in SQL.
In the IR Column Attributes set the column's Display Text As property to Standard Report Column so APEX won't escape the HTML tags.
This method has side effects: some IR filters won't work; aggregate calculations can't be applied to the column; and report exports contain the HTML rather than the expected value.
Edited by: fac586 on 02-Oct-2012 13:28
From APEX 4.2 IR columns have support for HTML Expressions, so Re: Report formatting/sorting issue using a hidden column and HTML Expression should be used, as it's purely declarative and provides better separation of concerns. (Still a problem on report exports though. Whilst the sort column can be suppressed using a condition, the hidden column can't be "unhidden" to replace it.)