Select rows with alternate ordered field from another table - mysql

Question

Given a *students_exam_rooms* table:
+------------+---------+---------+
| student_id | room_id | seat_no |
+------------+---------+---------+
| 1 | 30 | 1001 |
| 2 | 30 | 1002 |
| 3 | 31 | 2001 |
| 4 | 32 | 2002 |
| 5 | 33 | 3001 |
| 6 | 33 | 3002 |
| 7 | 34 | 4001 |
| 8 | 34 | 4002 |
+------------+---------+---------+
And *students_tbl*:
+------------+-------------+------+
| student_id | studen_name | year |
+------------+-------------+------+
| 1 | Eric | 1 |
| 2 | Mustafa | 1 |
| 3 | Michael | 2 |
| 4 | Andy | 2 |
| 5 | Rafael | 3 |
| 6 | Mark | 3 |
| 7 | Jack | 4 |
| 8 | peter | 4 |
+------------+-------------+------+
How can I select from *students_exam_rooms* ordering by *students_tbl.year* but with one after one like this:
+--------------+------+
| student_name | year |
+--------------+------+
| Eric | 1 |
| Michael | 2 |
| Rafael | 3 |
| Jack | 4 |
| Mustafa | 1 |
| Andy | 2 |
| Mark | 3 |
| Peter | 4 |
+--------------+------+

Answer 1

I'm assuming that you want to order by the "occurrence-count" of the year then the year, e.g. all the first-occurrences of all years first, sorted by year, then all second-occurrences of all years also sorted by year, and so on. That would be a perfect case for emulating other RDBMS' analytic / windowing functions:
select *
from (
select
s.studen_name,
s.year,
ser.*,
(
select 1 + count(*)
from students_tbl s2
where s.year = s2.year
and s.student_id > s2.student_id
) rank
from students_tbl s
JOIN students_exam_rooms ser
ON s.student_id = ser.student_id
) i_dont_really_want_to_name_this
order by rank, year
Here it is against a slightly tweaked version of JW's fiddle: http://www.sqlfiddle.com/#!2/27c91/1
Emulating Analytic (AKA Ranking) Functions with MySQL is a good article that gives more background and explanation.

Answer 2

try any of these below:
SELECT a.studen_name, a.year
FROM students_tbl a
INNER JOIN students_exam_rooms b
ON a.student_id = b.student_id
ORDER BY REVERSE(b.seat_no),
a.year
SQLFiddle Demo
by using Modulo
SELECT a.studen_name, a.year
FROM students_tbl a
INNER JOIN students_exam_rooms b
ON a.student_id = b.student_id
ORDER BY CASE WHEN MOD(b.seat_no, 2) <> 0 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END,
a.year
SQLFiddle Demo

Answer 3

Looks to me like you're trying to sort first by seat and then by year. Looking at your students_exam_rooms table, it looks like you started with a simple seat number and prepended year * 1000. So, if we omit the year, it looks like this:
> select * from fixed_students_exam_rooms;
+------------+---------+---------+
| student_id | room_id | seat_no |
+------------+---------+---------+
| 1 | 30 | 1 |
| 2 | 30 | 2 |
| 3 | 31 | 1 |
| 4 | 32 | 2 |
| 5 | 33 | 1 |
| 6 | 33 | 2 |
| 7 | 34 | 1 |
| 8 | 34 | 2 |
+------------+---------+---------+
And if you had that table, your query is simple:
select
student_name, year
from
modified_student_exame_rooms
left join students_tbl using (student_id)
order by
seat_no, year
;
Using the table as you currently have it, it's only slightly more complicated, assuming the "core seat number" doesn't excede 999.
select
student_name, year
from
modified_student_exame_rooms
left join students_tbl using (student_id)
order by
convert(substr(seat_no, 2), unsigned),
year
;