How do I sort a VARCHAR column in SQL server that contains numbers?

Question

I have a VARCHAR column in a SQL Server 2000 database that can contain either letters or numbers. It depends on how the application is configured o

Answer 1

One possible solution is to pad the numeric values with a character in front so that all are of the same string length.

Here is an example using that approach:

select MyColumn
from MyTable
order by 
    case IsNumeric(MyColumn) 
        when 1 then Replicate('0', 100 - Len(MyColumn)) + MyColumn
        else MyColumn
    end

The 100 should be replaced with the actual length of that column.