SQL Server ORDER BY date and nulls last

Question

I am trying to order by date. I want the most recent dates coming in first. That's easy enough, but there are many records that are null and those come before any records that have a date.

I have tried a few things with no success:

ORDER BY ISNULL(Next_Contact_Date, 0)

ORDER BY ISNULL(Next_Contact_Date, 999999999)

ORDER BY coalesce(Next_Contact_Date, 99/99/9999)

How can I order by date and have the nulls come in last? The data type is smalldatetime.

Answer 1

smalldatetime has range up to June 6, 2079 so you can use

ORDER BY ISNULL(Next_Contact_Date, '2079-06-05T23:59:00')

If no legitimate records will have that date.

If this is not an assumption you fancy relying on a more robust option is sorting on two columns.

ORDER BY CASE WHEN Next_Contact_Date IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, Next_Contact_Date

Both of the above suggestions are not able to use an index to avoid a sort however and give similar looking plans.

One other possibility if such an index exists is

SELECT 1 AS Grp, Next_Contact_Date 
FROM T 
WHERE Next_Contact_Date IS NOT NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT 2 AS Grp, Next_Contact_Date 
FROM T 
WHERE Next_Contact_Date IS NULL
ORDER BY Grp, Next_Contact_Date

Answer 2

Use desc and multiply by -1 if necessary. Example for ascending int ordering with nulls last:

select * 
from
(select null v union all select 1 v union all select 2 v) t
order by -t.v desc

Answer 3

I know this is old but this is what worked for me

Order by Isnull(Date,'12/31/9999')

Answer 4

According to Itzik Ben-Gan, author of T-SQL Fundamentals for MS SQL Server 2012, "By default, SQL Server sorts NULL marks before non-NULL values. To get NULL marks to sort last, you can use a CASE expression that returns 1 when the" Next_Contact_Date column is NULL, "and 0 when it is not NULL. Non-NULL marks get 0 back from the expression; therefore, they sort before NULL marks (which get 1). This CASE expression is used as the first sort column." The Next_Contact_Date column "should be specified as the second sort column. This way, non-NULL marks sort correctly among themselves." Here is the solution query for your example for MS SQL Server 2012 (and SQL Server 2014):

ORDER BY 
   CASE 
        WHEN Next_Contact_Date IS NULL THEN 1
        ELSE 0
   END, Next_Contact_Date;

Equivalent code using IIF syntax:

ORDER BY 
   IIF(Next_Contact_Date IS NULL, 1, 0),
   Next_Contact_Date;

Answer 5

A bit late, but maybe someone finds it useful.

For me, ISNULL was out of question due to the table scan. UNION ALL would need me to repeat a complex query, and due to me selecting only the TOP X it would not have been very efficient.

If you are able to change the table design, you can:

1. Add another field, just for sorting, such as Next_Contact_Date_Sort.

2. Create a trigger that fills that field with a large (or small) value, depending on what you need:

   CREATE TRIGGER FILL_SORTABLE_DATE ON YOUR_TABLE AFTER INSERT,UPDATE AS 
   BEGIN
       SET NOCOUNT ON;
       IF (update(Next_Contact_Date)) BEGIN
       UPDATE YOUR_TABLE SET Next_Contact_Date_Sort=IIF(YOUR_TABLE.Next_Contact_Date IS NULL, 99/99/9999, YOUR_TABLE.Next_Contact_Date_Sort) FROM inserted i WHERE YOUR_TABLE.key1=i.key1 AND YOUR_TABLE.key2=i.key2
       END
   END
   

Answer 6

order by -cast([Next_Contact_Date] as bigint) desc