Database Design – Arbitrarily Ordering Records in a Table

database-agnosticdatabase-designorder-byrelational-theory

A common need when using a database is to access records in order. For example, if I have a blog, I want to be able to reorder my blog posts in arbitrary order. These entries often have lots of relationships, so a relational database seems to make sense.

The common solution that I have seen is to add an integer column order:

CREATE TABLE AS your_table (id, title, sort_order)
AS VALUES
  (0, 'Lorem ipsum',   3),
  (1, 'Dolor sit',     2),
  (2, 'Amet, consect', 0),
  (3, 'Elit fusce',    1);

Then, we can sort the rows by order to get them in the proper order.

However, this seems clumsy:

  • If I want to move record 0 to the start, I have to reorder every record
  • If I want to insert a new record in the middle, I have to reorder every record after it
  • If I want to remove a record, I have to reorder every record after it

It's easy to imagine a situations like:

  • Two records have the same order
  • There are gaps in the order between records

These could happen fairly easily for a number of reasons.

This is the approach that applications like Joomla take:

Example of Joomla's approach to ordering

You could argue that the interface here is bad, and that instead of humans directly editing numbers, they should use arrows or drag-and-drop—and you'd probably be right. But behind the scenes, the same thing is happening.

Some people have proposed using a decimal to store order, so that you can use "2.5" to insert a record in between the records at order 2 and 3. And while that helps a little, it's arguably even messier because you can end up with weird decimals (where do you stop? 2.75? 2.875? 2.8125?)

Is there a better way to store order in a table?

Best Answer

If I want to move record 0 to the start, I have to reorder every record

No, there's a simpler way.

update your_table
set order = -1 
where id = 0;

If I want to insert a new record in the middle, I have to reorder every record after it

That's true, unless you use a data type that supports "between" values. Float and numeric types allow you to update a value to, say, 2.5. But varchar(n) works, too. (Think 'a', 'b', 'c'; then think 'ba', 'bb', 'bc'.)

If I want to remove a record, I have to reorder every record after it

No, there's a simpler way. Just delete the row. The remaining rows will still sort correctly.

It's easy to imagine a situations like:

Two records have the same order

A unique constraint can prevent that.

There are gaps in the order between records

Gaps have no effect on how a dbms sorts values in a column.

Some people have proposed using a decimal to store order, so that you can use "2.5" to insert a record in between the records at order 2 and 3. And while that helps a little, it's arguably even messier because you can end up with weird decimals (where do you stop? 2.75? 2.875? 2.8125?)

You don't stop until you have to. The dbms has no problem sorting values that have 2, 7, or 15 places after the decimal point.

I think your real problem is that you'd like to see values in sorted order as integers. You can do that.

create table your_table (
  id int primary key, 
  title varchar(13), 
  sort_order float
);
    
insert into your_table values
(0, 'Lorem ipsum', 2.0),
(1, 'Dolor sit', 1.5),
(2, 'Amet, consect', 0.0),
(3, 'Elit fusce', 1.0);

-- This windowing function will "transform" the floats into sorted integers.
select id, title,
       row_number() over (order by sort_order)
from your_table
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