Returning query results in predefined order

Question

Is it possible to do a SELECT statement with a predetermined order, ie. selecting IDs 7,2,5,9 and 8 and returning them in that order, based on

Answer 1

One Oracle solution is:

SELECT id FROM table WHERE id in (7,2,5,9,8)
ORDER BY DECODE(id,7,1,2,2,5,3,9,4,8,5,6);

This assigns an order number to each ID. Works OK for a small set of values.