Issue with order by for type varchar

Hi All,

I am trying to order a select by the primary key which is a varchar field.

I have two known conditions,

1. the varchar always contains 28 characters. ( and, yes, I know the irony
of using a variable array on a known fixed length field )

2. the content of this field contains only the characters used in base 64
encoding.

However, when I do an order by I get misplacing of characters so character
sequences like "000+..." are coming after "0000....".

Is there any way of adding a function that would make the order by do
ordering on this field in the same way as the Java Collections.sort()
method?

Cheers

Simon

Simon Kelly
Java Developer
Information Systems Development
Information Technology Shared Services
Ministry of Health
DDI:
Mobile:

http://www.moh.govt.nz
mailto:Simon_Kelly(at)moh(dot)govt(dot)nz

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