sorting arbitrarily

Hey folks -

I'm working on a database that has a questionaire. The questions belong to
groups, categories, then sub-categories.

These questions must follow a sorting order that doesn't have any built-in
definition (i.e. alphabetically).

What's the best way to do this kind of thing? It has to be user-editable.

I was thinking of making a 1-character text column that only allows
alphanumeric characters. This column would be invisible to users, but I
would make a form showing each question as a row, with 'promote' and
'demote' buttons. Then I have to do some fancy footwork in order to change
the values of the sort-order field, esp. if number 6 is supposed to be
promoted up so that it's between number 2 and 3.

Steve Lefevre

You provide the solution yourself. In this kind of situations I use a
numeric field (for flexibility) to sort by. That way I (or my users) have
full control over the sort order.