根据表B（MySQL）的排序结果更新表A中的值

Question

First - Thanks in Advance for looking and possibly helping, it is most appreciated!

Basically I need to sort Table A, Column DESCRIPT, from A~Z and then...

Based on this sort, then update Table B, Column PRINTORDER so that the lowest sort value would have a PRINTORDER = 1 and the highest sort value would have a PRINTORDER = 20,000

In the subset of data the lowest is 18681 & highest is 18695. (Actual table range is from 1 to 20,000)

The only data that should be modified is PRINTORDER in Table B.

Here is a subset of data from Table A:

    INUM    DESCRIPT
    23151   Crayon Apron
    23152   Acrylic bunny acry153
    23153   Acrylic easter egg acry154
    23154   Acrylic posypot tulip acrye01a
    23155   Acrylic orn chick acrye02
    23156   Hat baby chick bge10151
    23157   Sipper baby chick bge10158
    23158   Grow chick ea10991
    23159   Nail crystals easter ea11052
    23160   Mug jelly bean em11681
    23161   Plush tumbleweed chick he10148

Here is a subset of data from Table B:

    ID      INUM    PrintOrder
    142161  23151   18681
    144054  23161   18683
    145092  23159   18687
    145093  23160   18688
    145094  23152   18689
    145095  23153   18690
    145096  23155   18691
    145097  23154   18692
    145098  23158   18693
    145099  23156   18694
    145100  23157   18695

Here is the hoped for result:

    ID      INUM    PrintOrder
    142161  23151   18681
    144054  23161   18694
    145092  23159   18693
    145093  23160   18692
    145094  23152   18689
    145095  23153   18683
    145096  23155   18687
    145097  23154   18688
    145098  23158   18690
    145099  23156   18691
    145100  23157   18695

Thanks & Happy New Year!

Answer 1

This might work. First you set the counter (i) which will go from 1 to 20000 (if you have 20000 rows). Then you use the UPDATE ... JOIN ... ORDER BY pattern to sort by DESCRIPT, at which point you can set PrintOrder to the sequential number. I hope it works for you.

set @i:=1;

UPDATE b b
   JOIN 
   (
   SELECT a.INUM, DESCRIPT
   FROM a AS a
   WHERE DESCRIPT <> ''
   ORDER BY DESCRIPT
) a
ON b.INUM = a.INUM
SET b.PrintOrder=@i:=@i+1;