IMO - it is rare to "over-index" a table - I almost always find the exact opposite. However, things I look for when I see many indexes:

1. Are...

Regarding simply ordering the values so that numerics are all first - in numeric order, and alphas follow in alpha order, that is also simple with the Try_Convert method.

select [data]

from...

ctaylor 79909 (7/10/2015)

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Please note that I changed your suggestion language to prefix a hyphen to the value so I could eliminate the challenge of working through the process of quoting...

Use Try_Convert, which does what IsNumeric should have done... Try_Convert(<type>, <data>) returns a NULL if the data cannot be converted to the type, or returns the data converted...

An "instead of" trigger seems like the best solution. It is pretty simple for your example here:

create trigger table1_ins_upd

on table1 instead of insert, update

as

begin

declare @num_rows int;

...