ORDER BY problems

[adamhhh1]

hello there,

i have 2 queries, one which i use ORDER BY to order by a text heading, however the results return no logical order. (e.g. their all over the place).

heres a brief breakdown of the code:

$query = "SELECT * FROM sections WHERE document_id = $document_id ORDER BY section_heading DESC";

$result = mysql_query($query)
or die ("This entry hasn't been found.");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
{
	$section_heading = $row['section_heading'];
	$section_id =  $row['section_id'];

$today = date("Y-d-m");

$dateArray=explode('-',$today);

$start_date = date('Y-d-m', mktime(0, 0, 0, $dateArray[2], $dateArray[1], $dateArray[0]));
$correct_year = $dateArray[0];
$test = $dateArray[2];
//echo $test;
$current_day = date("d");

//echo $dateArray[0];
// take 6 off the month
$end_date = $test - 6;
//echo $end_date;	
// if less than jan, take 1 off the year

$current_year = "2007";

if ($end_date < 10)
{
$end_date2 = "0" . $end_date;
//echo $end_date2;
}

$new_date22 =  $current_year . "-" . $end_date2 . "-" . $current_day;

$today2 = date("Y-m-d");
//echo $today2;

$query2 = "SELECT * FROM fragments WHERE section_id = $section_id AND date_created BETWEEN '$new_date22 00:00:00' AND '$today2 23:59:59' ORDER BY fragment_heading DESC";	

any idea? the actual database field is just a varchar.

[NogDog]

It's hard to say for sure without any example data and the resulting sorted sequence, but my best guess is that since it is a varchar field the sort order is alphabetical, but you are expecting a numeric ordering. If that is the case, then you probably should redefine the field to be sorted as an applicable type (INT, FLOAT, DATE, etc.) for the type of data being stored in it. If that is not doable, then you'll need to cast the sort field to the desired type in your query's column list.