Custom Sort Priority — Solution & ExplanationProblems / Custom Sort Priority / EditorialApproach

Map words to ranks. The simple CASE (CASE priority WHEN 'critical' THEN 1 ...) is an inline lookup table assigning each label its business position.

Sort by the rank, tie-breaking by ticket_id for a stable, deterministic listing.

Key InsightDatabases sort by *values*, and string values sort alphabetically — the engine cannot know that low < critical in your domain. Any time an enum has a semantic order (priorities, sizes S/M/L/XL, statuses, weekdays), that order must be materialized as data: an inline CASE for one query, or a rank column in a dimension table when several queries need it. The inline CASE-in-ORDER-BY is the lightweight end of that spectrum; outputting the rank, as here, is one step toward the dimension-table end.Hints

Sorting the priority strings directly gives alphabetical order — 'low' lands above 'medium'. Map words to numbers first, sort the numbers.

SQL's compact CASE form — CASE priority WHEN 'critical' THEN 1 ... — reads like the lookup table it is.

Real queues sort by ORDER BY CASE ... END directly without outputting the rank; emitting sort_rank here makes the mapping visible (and it doubles as the deterministic tie-broken sort key).

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