Order by followed by dependent order by - sql

Question

I have a table with part of data like below . I have done order by on edition_id .
Now there is further requirement of ordering laungauge_id which depends on value of edition_id.
Edition_id refers to city from which a newspaper is published.
Language_id refers to different languages in which newspaper is
published.
So suppose edition_id = 5 it means New Delhi.
For New Delhi language_id are 13(English ), 5 (Hindi) ,1(Telugu ),4(Urdu).
What i want is to display for New Delhi , is display all English articles first , followed by hindi , followed by Telugu followed by Urdu.
If edition_id=1 then order of language_id should be 13,1,2.
Similarly ,
If edition_id=5 then order of language_id should be 13,5,1,4
Right now what I have is
Edition_id | Language_id
1 1
1 2
1 13
1 1
1 13
1 2
5 4
5 1
5 1
5 4
5 13
5 5
5 13
What is required
Edition_id | Language_id
1 13
1 13
1 1
1 1
1 2
1 2
5 13
5 13
5 5
5 1
5 1
5 4
5 4
How to do this ? Please help.
Is something like this possibe
Select * from <table>
order by edition_id ,
case when edition=6 then <order specified for language_id ie 13,5,1,4>

Answer 1

I would create a supplementary ranking table. I would then JOIN to provide your sort order. Eg:
EDITION_SORT_ORDER
EDITION_ID LANGUAGE_ID RANK
---------- ----------- ----
1 13 1
1 1 2
1 2 3
5 13 1
5 5 2
5 1 3
5 4 4
Using this table in a query might look like this:
SELECT E.EDITION_ID, E.LANGUAGE_ID
FROM <TABLE> E LEFT OUTER JOIN EDITION_SORT_ORDER S ON
E.EDITION_ID = S.EDITION_ID AND
E.LANGUAGE_ID = S.LANGUAGE_ID
ORDER BY S.RANK
This way you can add other rules in future, and it isn't a huge mess of CASE logic.
Alternatively, if you want to avoid a JOIN, you could create a stored function which did a similar lookup and returned a rank (based on passed parameters of EDITION_ID and LANGUAGE_ID).
If you must use CASE, then I'd confine it to a function so you can re-use the logic elsewhere.

Answer 2

If there is no mathematical logic behind it, I would insert another column that can be used for proper sorting.
If you cannot do this, you can simply type out the rules for the relation like this:
Order By Edition_Id,
case Edition_id
when 1 then
case Language_id
when 13 then 1
when 1 then 2
when 2 then 3
end
when 5 then
case Language_id
when 13 then 1
when 5 then 2
when 1 then 3
when 4 then 4
end
end

Answer 3

without a fixed order colum you could things like that, but the logic is not comprehensible.
Assuming first criteria is length of Language_id,
Second is Edition_id= Language_id,
rest is order of Language_id it could or work this way:
Declare #t table(Edition_id int, Language_id int)
insert into #t values
(1, 1),
(1, 2),
(1, 13),
(1, 1),
(1, 13),
(1, 2),
(5, 4),
(5, 1),
(5, 1),
(5, 4),
(5, 13),
(5, 5),
(5, 13);
Select * from #t
order by Edition_id,Case when len (Cast(Language_ID as Varchar(10)))=1 then '1' else '0' end
+case when Edition_id=Language_id then '0' else '1' end
,Language_ID

Answer 4

You've probably considered this but if your desired ordering is always based of the actual alphabetical name of the language then there would usually be a table with the language description that you could join with and then sort by. I base this on your quote below.
...English articles first , followed by hindi , followed by Telugu
followed by Urdu.
SELECT E.EDITION_ID, E.LANGUAGE_ID, LN.LANGUAGE_NAME
FROM <TABLE> E LEFT OUTER JOIN <LANGUAGE_NAMES> LN ON
E.LANGUAGE_ID = LN.LANGUAGE_ID
ORDER BY 1, 3