Sorting In The Alpha Numeric Col In Oracle

Question

Hi,
I have product table having product_name which can have values like 'STATEMENT Checking' and some 'statement savings' and some times like 123 and some times like '123 Certificate of Deposit'.
Here the requirement is all the numeric should come first and then the non numeric then also'STATEMENT Checking' and 'statement savings' should come one by one.We are using the upper case in the order by clause like ORDER BY UPPER(product_name) but the numeric fields are not coming properly like 100 seems to be less than 2 because it is sorting based upon the ascii value of the first character.
Is there any way to over come this.
Please suggest some ideas.
Regards,
Papi

Answer 1

Hi,
here is one way:
WITH mydata(txt) AS
  SELECT 'STATEMENT Checking' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT 'statement savings' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT '123' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT '123 Certificate of Deposit' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT '123 Test with same number' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT '2' FROM DUAL UNION ALL
  SELECT '2 Certificate of Deposit' FROM DUAL
SELECT txt
   FROM mydata
  ORDER BY CASE WHEN REGEXP_LIKE(txt,'^\d+')
                THEN
                   TO_CHAR(TO_NUMBER(REGEXP_SUBSTR(txt,'^\d+')), '9999999') || REGEXP_REPLACE(txt,'^[\d]+')
                ELSE UPPER(txt)
           END;
TXT                      
2                        
2 Certificate of Deposit 
123                      
123 Certificate of Deposit
123 Test with same number
STATEMENT Checking       
statement savings         Please always remember to post some sample data (CREATE TABLE and INSERT STATEMENT or WITH clause like I did) and your expected output.
Regards.
Al