Sorting the column of VARCHAR in report

Question

Hi,
I want to sort the column in report with the following scenario,
I have a column name with PERIOD as VarChar with values APR-11,FEB-11,JAN-11,JUN-11,MAR-11,MAY-11 in a report
As you can see, It is sorting in Alphabetic order but I need to arrange in JAN-11,FEB-11,MAR-11,APR-11,MAY-11,JUN-11
So can anyone has a good work around solution?
regards
Vj

Answer 1

Here is your challenge. How do you get Jan-12 to come after Dec-11? Adil's solution is partial. It works only for the current year. Once you cross over to the next year, it stops working because you are only sorting the month. You must include the year to make the solution complete. So here is a solution that always works. It involves some math so I'll explain the math first.
Let's look at your values:
Jan-11
Feb-11
Dec-11
Jan-12
If you convert each month to a number (i.e., Jan = 1, Feb =2... etc.) and then multiply the year by 1000 and finally add them together, we get this:
Jan-11 1 --> 11001
Feb-11 2 --> 11002
Dec-11 12 --> 11012
Jan-12 1 --> 12001
You get the picture. The last column will be in the order you seek because the integer will always be greater than the previous month-year even at the transition from December to January. BTW, I multiplied the two digit year by 1000 to ensure that there would be no overlap.
Now you can sort by this third column. Here is the code that does this:
CAST(CASE WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Jan' THEN '1' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Feb' THEN '2' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Mar' THEN '3' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Apr' THEN '4' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'May' THEN '5' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Jun' THEN '6' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Jul' THEN '7' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Aug' THEN '8' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Sep' THEN '9' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Oct' THEN '10' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Nov' THEN '11' WHEN LEFT(Table.PERIOD, 3) = 'Dec' THEN '12' END AS INTEGER)+CAST(RIGHT(Table.PERIOD, 2) AS INTEGER)*1000
This solves your problem now even when the month-year crosses to the next year. There you go!