[GENERAL] sorting library of congress numbers

[Rick Schumeyer]

I have a table where one of the columns is a library of congress number. I would like to be able to ORDER BY this column.   Currently, the column is a varchar.  Unfortunately, a normal string comparison will not work.   First, has anyone done this already?   If not, I’m thinking I would need to: 1)       define a new type to hold LOC numbers. 2)       write a function that determines less than, greater than   It seems like I’m missing something here.  I have not yet defined a new type…is defining less/greater part of that process?   Is there a simpler way to do this?   Any advice is appreciated.