I know that this question has been asked several times and I've read all the answer but none of them seem to completely solve my problem. I'm switching from a mySQL database to a MS Access database with MS SQL. In both of the case I use a php script to connect to the database and perform SQL queries. I need to find a suitable replacement for a query I used to perform on mySQL. I want to: perform a first query and order records alphabetically based on one of the columns construct a list of IDs which reflects the previous alphabetical order perform a second query with the IN clause applied with the IDs' list and ordered by this list. In mySQL I used to perform the last query this way: SELECT name FROM users WHERE id IN ($name_ids) ORDER BY FIND_IN_SET(id,'$name_ids') Since FIND_IN_SET is available only in mySQL and CHARINDEX and PATINDEX are not available from my php script, how can I achieve this? I know that I could write something like: SELECT name FROM users WHERE id IN ($name_ids) ORDER BY CASE id WHEN ... THEN 1 WHEN ... THEN 2 WHEN ... THEN 3 WHEN ... THEN 4 END but you have to consider that: IDs' list has variable length and elements because it depends on the first query that list can easily contains thousands of elements Have you got any hint on this? Is there a way to programmatically construct the ORDER BY CASE ... WHEN ... statement? Is there a better approach since my list of IDs can be big?