...MySQL? Eg: b>a, c>f? For an 'events' table, I basically have a list of values going on in my database, going from Jan to December. I want to fetch MySQL results, but in a way that the first priority is for the status (pending > completed), second priority for the year; so between 2011 and 2012, all results for 2011 would show up first, and then if there are two or more than two entries for 2011, they would get sorted by the month first (January > February > March > April etc.).

The problem here is that all the fields have been set as Varchar, that is "January" and "February", and "Pending" and"Completed", and "2011" and "2012" are varchars. Indeed, Pending/Completed goes in the "status" column and the months go in the "event month" column, and the years in the year column in the table in the database.

Any ideas on how to proceed on this one?

Or if I should re-do it in some completely different way?