Sort Date stored in SQLite database - sql

Question

I'm using a SQLite database (not mine) and I have to sort some data, order by date.
I have done many searches on the web but no solutions found!
The type of the field with the dates is "Date", with the format: DD/MM/YYYY HH:mm:SS
I tried many functions like strftime, datetime, date, ... But I can't sort the date correctly.
For example, if I do something like this:
SELECT * FROM events ORDER BY start_date
The date 04/10/2013 00:00:00 is after 03/12/2013... You know what I mean ?
I really don't know how I can sort in this format.
Thanks for your help
UPDATE 1:
I tried something like this:
SELECT start_date FROM events ORDER BY strftime('%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S', start_date)
Is this the right way to do ?
Results: No error, but nothing has changed. The dates are not sorted.
UPDATE 2:
Solution by laalto:
select * from tab order by substr(col,7,4)||'-'||substr(col,4,2)||'-'||substr(col,1,2)||'T'||substr(col,12);

Answer 1

The best way is to make the data sortable at insertion phase e.g. by inserting ISO-8601 stamps or unixtime integers, but since it's not your database, let's assume you can't influence that.
You can use substr() to extract parts from the datetime string and construct e.g. a ISO-8601 datetime string that you can sort lexicographically, resulting in chronological order.
Example:
sqlite> create table tab(col);
sqlite> insert into tab values('04/10/2013 00:00:00'),('03/12/2013 00:00:00');
sqlite> select substr(col,7,4)||'-'||substr(col,4,2)||'-'||substr(col,1,2)||'T'||substr(col,12) as date from tab order by date;
2013-10-04T00:00:00
2013-12-03T00:00:00
sqlite> select * from tab order by substr(col,7,4)||'-'||substr(col,4,2)||'-'||substr(col,1,2)||'T'||substr(col,12);
04/10/2013 00:00:00
03/12/2013 00:00:00