Ordered Value by Column / Row

Question

Its a little difficult to explain. It might be easier to skip to the examples.

A table has an id and four columns that each allow null.

ID, Col1, Co         


        

Answer 1

I may not understand everything that you described you wanted. From reading your problem and comments from others, I am guessing that this is what you are looking for:

Updated version:

with cteOriginal as
(
    select *, RANK() over (partition by [SortOrder] order by id asc) as [NonUniqueSortOrder]
    from
    (
        select id, A as [value], 1 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where A is not null
        union all
        select id, B as [value], 2 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where B is not null
        union all
        select id, C as [value], 3 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where C is not null
        union all
        select id, D as [value], 4 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where D is not null
    ) as temp
)
select [value]
from cteOriginal
where id = (select MIN(tmp.id) from cteOriginal tmp where tmp.value = cteOriginal.value)
order by ((([NonUniqueSortOrder] - 1) * 4) + [SortOrder])

I got rid of the duplicate values by picking the one with the smallest id, min(id). You can change it to use max(id).

Initial version:

with cteOriginal as
(
    select *, RANK() over (partition by [column] order by id asc) as [NonUniqueSortOrder]
    from
    (
        select id, A as [value], 'A' as [Column], 1 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where A is not null
        union all
        select id, B as [value], 'B' as [Column], 2 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where B is not null
        union all
        select id, C as [value], 'C' as [Column], 3 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where C is not null
        union all
        select id, D as [value], 'D' as [Column], 4 as [SortOrder]
        from #original
        where D is not null
    ) as temp
)
select [value]
from cteOriginal
order by ((([NonUniqueSortOrder] - 1) * 4) + [SortOrder])

By the way, I am using mssql 2005 for this query. Please comment and we'll refine it.