SQL for ordering by number - 1,2,3,4 etc instead of 1,10,11,12

Question

I’m attempting to order by a number column in my database which has values 1-999

When I use

ORDER_BY registration_no ASC

I get….

Answer 1

Sometimes you just don't have a choice about having to store numbers mixed with text. In one of our applications, the web site host we use for our e-commerce site makes filters dynamically out of lists. There is no option to sort by any field but the displayed text. When we wanted filters built off a list that said things like 2" to 8" 9" to 12" 13" to 15" etc, we needed it to sort 2-9-13, not 13-2-9 as it will when reading the numeric values. So I used the SQL Server Replicate function along with the length of the longest number to pad any shorter numbers with a leading space. Now 20 is sorted after 3, and so on.

I was working with a view that gave me the minimum and maximum lengths, widths, etc for the item type and class, and here is an example of how I did the text. (LBnLow and LBnHigh are the Low and High end of the 5 length brackets.)

REPLICATE(' ', LEN(LB5Low) - LEN(LB1High)) + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB1High) + '" and Under' AS L1Text,
REPLICATE(' ', LEN(LB5Low) - LEN(LB2Low)) + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB2Low) + '" to ' + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB2High) + '"' AS L2Text,
REPLICATE(' ', LEN(LB5Low) - LEN(LB3Low)) + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB3Low) + '" to ' + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB3High) + '"' AS L3Text,
REPLICATE(' ', LEN(LB5Low) - LEN(LB4Low)) + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB4Low) + '" to ' + CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB4High) + '"' AS L4Text,
CONVERT(NVARCHAR(4), LB5Low) + '" and Over' AS L5Text