On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Craig James<craig_james@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Suppose I have a large table with a small-cardinality CATEGORY column (say, > categories 1..5). I need to sort by an arbitrary (i.e. user-specified) > mapping of CATEGORY, something like this: > > 1 => 'z' > 2 => 'a' > 3 => 'b' > 4 => 'w' > 5 => 'h' > > So when I get done, the sort order should be 2,3,5,4,1. If the object is to avoid a separate table, you can do it with a "case" statement: select ... from ... order by case category when 1 then 'z' when 2 then 'a' when 3 then 'b' when 4 then 'w' when 5 then 'h' end If you this sounds slow, you're right. But it might perform well enough for your use case. A. -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance