How to Group SQL Results by Date in the Actual Order that they Appear in the Year in Oracle?

Question

I'm trying to figure out how I can group the SQL results from a table in Oracle in the actual order in which the month occurred instead of the alphabet order of their names.

Can anyone help me with this? Thanks in advanced.

============ UPDATE ============

Here's an example query:

SELECT exec_month FROM table_or_view WHERE condition=1 GROUP BY exec_month;

You see, the problem is that I can't group by month like I want to. Just as Vincent Malgrat said, "Grouping has no implied order".

Answer 1

Grouping has no implied order . Add an ORDER BY clause if you want to display the rows in a certain order:

SQL> with data as (
  2     SELECT add_months(trunc(sysdate, 'year'), rownum-1) dt
  3       FROM dual CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 4
  4  )
  5  select to_char(dt, 'month')
  6    from data
  7   group by to_char(dt, 'month'), trunc(dt, 'month')
  8   order by trunc(dt, 'month');

TO_CHAR(D
---------
january
february
march
april