Here is an example of calculating distances based on lat/long in SQL

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=33753

Another opiton if the letters are not always 'a' and 'x'

select * from #the_table

order by replicate('0',10 - len(the_value) + patindex('%[0-9]%',reverse(the_value))) + the_value

There are several oppourtunities for improvement but rather than tuning pieces of the procedure, we can probably rewrite it without cursors if you explain what it's doing overall. (I could figure...