Sorry, I'm very new to SQL. I just learned it few hours ago. I'm using MariaDB + InnoDB Engine with HeidiSQL software + CodeIgniter 3. Let's say I have a table named disciples with the following data:
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| sort_id | name |
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| 1 | Peter |
| 4 | John |
| 3 | David |
| 5 | Petrus |
| 2 | Matthew |
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I'm fully aware that it's better to have a column called sort_id to be able to fetch the data using ORDER BY if I prefer a custom sorting. But if I delete row 3, the new table will look like this:
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| sort_id | name |
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| 1 | Peter |
| 4 | John |
| 5 | Petrus |
| 2 | Matthew |
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The thing is I'm having OCD (imagine there are 1000 rows), it hurts my eyes to see this mess with some missing numbers (in this case number 3 - see the above table) under sort_id. I think it has something to do with "relational database". Is there a way to quickly and automatically "re-assign/reset" new sort_id numbers to given rows and sort them ASC order according to the name using SQL code without having to do it manually?
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| sort_id | name |
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| 1 | John |
| 2 | Matthew |
| 3 | Peter |
| 4 | Petrus |
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I figured this out after reading the answer from Lynn Crumbling.
She made me realized I need a primary key in order to have a better management for my rows which is exactly what I was looking for. It happens that InnoDB automatically creates a primary key and is hidden from HeidiSQL interface unless I specify a specific column for example id. Now, I can re-organize my table rows by editing the primary key id and the table row will automatically sort itself the way I want. Before this, I edited the sort_id but the data did not update accordingly because it was not the primary key.
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| id | sort_id | name |
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| 1 | 1 | Peter |
| 2 | 4 | John |
| 3 | 5 | Petrus |
| 4 | 2 | Matthew |
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Thank you.