Return the rows of the table where a column contains a specific value first

Question

I want my query to return the rows of the table where a column contains a specific values first in a certain order, and then return the rest of the rows alphabetized.
For Example:
Country
ALBANIA
ARGENTINA
AUSTRALIA
CANADA
USA
Now i want USA and CANADA on top in that order and then other in alphabetized order.
Edited by: 986155 on Feb 4, 2013 11:12 PM

Answer 1

986155 wrote:
If it is 2 then i can write a case... i want generalised one where may be around 5 or 6 mentioned should be in descending order at the top and remaining in ascending order there after.Computers tend not to work in 'generalized' ways... they require specifics.
If you store your "top" countries in a table you can then simply do something like...
SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  with c as (select 'USA' country from dual union
  2             select 'Germany' from dual union
  3             select 'India' from dual union
  4             select 'Australia' from dual union
  5             select 'Japan' from dual union
  6             select 'Canada' from dual union
  7             select 'United Kingdom' from dual union
  8             select 'France' from dual union
  9             select 'Spain' from dual union
10             select 'Italy' from dual
11           )
12      ,t as (-- top countries
13             select 'USA' country from dual union
14             select 'United Kingdom' from dual union
15             select 'Canada' from dual
16            )
17  select c.country
18  from   c left outer join t on (t.country = c.country)
19* ORDER BY t.country, c.country
SQL> /
COUNTRY
Canada
USA
United Kingdom
Australia
France
Germany
India
Italy
Japan
Spain
10 rows selected.