ORACLE Sort Alphabetically Upper A, Lower a, numerics - sql

Question

I am sorting with Oracle version 12 with the following NLS parameters
NLS_LANGUAGE AMERICAN
NLS_SORT BINARY
NLS_COMP BINARY
Eg. " 1Andy"," Andy","Andy","andy","Aaron","Bob"
SELECT name from employee order by name
result:
" 1Andy"," Andy","Aaron","Andy","Bob","andy"
if I change the NLS_SORT to WEST_EUROPEAN, it is suppose to be " 1Andy"," Andy","Aaron","Andy","andy","Bob"
but the result is " 1Andy"," Andy","andy","Aaron","Andy","Bob"
where andy even though is lower case goes in the middle.
SELECT name from employee order by NLSSORT(name ,'NLS_SORT=WEST_EUROPEAN')
enter image description here

Answer 1

To begin with, you can have case-insensitive sorting by adding _ci the the collation spec: west_european_ci. That being said, it seems in west_european sorting spec, number come after alpha chars. Here's what I get with your data using different collation specs
SQL> with dt as (
2 select ' 1Andy' cv from dual
3 union all
4 select ' Andy' from dual
5 union all
6 select '1Andy' from dual
7 union all
8 select 'Andy' from dual
9 union all
10 select 'andy' from dual
11 union all
12 select 'Aaron' from dual
13 union all
14 select 'Bob' from dual)
15 select *
16 from dt
17 order by cv;
CV
------
1Andy
Andy
1Andy
Aaron
Andy
Bob
andy
7 rows selected.
SQL>
SQL> with dt as (
2 select ' 1Andy' cv from dual
3 union all
4 select ' Andy' from dual
5 union all
6 select '1Andy' from dual
7 union all
8 select 'Andy' from dual
9 union all
10 select 'andy' from dual
11 union all
12 select 'Aaron' from dual
13 union all
14 select 'Bob' from dual)
15 select *
16 from dt
17 order by nlssort(cv,'NLS_SORT=WEST_EUROPEAN');
CV
------
Andy
1Andy
Aaron
Andy
andy
Bob
1Andy
7 rows selected.
SQL>
SQL> with dt as (
2 select ' 1Andy' cv from dual
3 union all
4 select ' Andy' from dual
5 union all
6 select '1Andy' from dual
7 union all
8 select 'Andy' from dual
9 union all
10 select 'andy' from dual
11 union all
12 select 'Aaron' from dual
13 union all
14 select 'Bob' from dual)
15 select *
16 from dt
17 order by nlssort(cv,'NLS_SORT=WEST_EUROPEAN_ci');
CV
------
Andy
1Andy
Aaron
Andy
andy
Bob
1Andy
7 rows selected.