Sorting an E-mail column on Domain name

I have a 20,000+ Goldmine Database. I would like to sort the database by e-mail addresses. Not by what is before the "@" symbol. I want to sort by what's after the @symbol, i.e., @foo.com, @foobar.net... Can you give me a clue?

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Here's the approach, illustrated with standard SQL. Use the POSITION string function to find the "@" in the e-mail address, and the SUBSTRING and LENGTH functions to pull out the rest of the string:

select emailaddress
     , substring (
         emailaddress
       from position('@' in emailaddress) + 1
       for length(emailaddress)
             - position('@' in emailaddress)
                 ) as domainname
  from goldminetable
order
    by domainname

I'm not familiar with the Goldmine database, so maybe it has its own non-standard syntax. For example, in Microsoft Access you have to say:

select emailaddress
     , mid (
         emailaddress
       , instr(emailaddress,'@') + 1
       , len(emailaddress)
             - instr(emailaddress,'@')
                 ) as domainname
  from goldminetable
order
    by mid (
         emailaddress
       , instr(emailaddress,'@') + 1
       , len(emailaddress)
             - instr(emailaddress,'@')
                 )

Some databases may not let you use the column alias "domainname" in the ORDER BY clause, so just repeat the function expression.

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This was first published in November 2002

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