Sometimes a desired sort order does not follow a natural alpha or numeric sort pattern. For example, there may be project phase names that should appear in charts in this specific order:

Design
Review
Budget
Implementation

One of the Sortby  options available in chart properties is “Load Order”.

A specific Load Order for a field can be created by loading a dummy table with the desired order prior to loading the source data. The dummy table “PhaseSort” may be dropped after loading the source data.

// Load a dummy table to establish 
// sort order for field “Phase”.
PhaseSort:
LOAD * INLINE [
Phase
Design
Review
Budget
Implementation
]
;

// Load the source data
Fact:
LOAD 
ProjectId, Phase, Amount
FROM projects.qvd (qvd)
;

// Dummy table no longer needed
DROP TABLE PhaseSort;

-Rob