Introducing Geographic Information Systems with ArcGIS: A Workbook Approach to Learning GIS, 3rd Edition

Sorting the Records

____ 13. Suppose now that you wanted to have the list ordered so that all the westernmost hydrants (those with the smallest x-coordinates) appeared at the top of the table. Click the X_COORD column heading to make it active. The column becomes highlighted in blue/cyan/turquoise—take your pick. Now right-click the column heading, then sort the values in the column by picking Sort Ascending from the drop-down menu. Notice that the values of the column are now in order from smallest to largest.

Note that when a value in a given record is moved, say during a sort, the entire record moves with it. That is, all of the values in a given row stay together (including OBJECTID), regardless. (If you are familiar with spreadsheets (e.g., Excel), you should note that this is different behavior from results you may receive with that software.)

If you wanted the Y_COORD column values to be a secondary sort (sorted “within” the X_COORD values), you could select both columns by holding down the CTRL key while clicking). (An example to clarify the terminology: in a telephone directory the first names are sorted “within” the last names.) When two or more columns are selected, the leftmost one will contain the primary sort, the next selected on the right will contain the secondary sort, and so on.

____ 14. Sort ascending the X_COORD and, within it, COLOR. Examine the results.

If having the leftmost column as the primary sort order doesn’t suit you, you must rearrange the ...