title: Ordering SQL query by specific field values
body: <p>I've got a sql query (using Firebird as the RDBMS) in which I need to order the results by a field, EDITION. I need to order by the contents of the field, however. i.e. "NE" goes first, "OE" goes second, "OP" goes third, and blanks go last. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue how this could be accomplished. All I've ever done is ORDER BY [FIELD] ASC/DESC and nothing else. </p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions? </p>
  
  <p>Edit: I really should clarify: I was just hoping to learn more here. I have it now that I just have multiple select statements defining which to show first. The query is rather large and I was really hoping to learn possibly a more effecient way of doing this: 
  example: </p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT * FROM RETAIL WHERE MTITLE LIKE 'somethi%' AND EDITION='NE'
  UNION 
  SELECT * FROM RETAIL WHERE MTITLE LIKE 'somethi%' AND EDITION='OE'
  UNION
  SELECT * FROM RETAIL WHERE MTITLE LIKE 'somethi%' AND EDITION='OP'
  UNION (etc...)
  </code></pre>