# Block item transactions, table, step index, sort order

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/block-item-transactions-table-step-index-sort-order/111219>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Created:** [October 6, 2025, 5:43pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/block-item-transactions-table-step-index-sort-order/111219 "2025-10-06T17:43:56Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![paul-griffith](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/paul-griffith/32/37249_2.png) [@paul-griffith](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/paul-griffith)\
**Post date:** [October 6, 2025, 5:47pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/block-item-transactions-table-step-index-sort-order/111219/2 "2025-10-06T17:47:50Z")

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> [@dis](#):
>
> One of these fields is the recipe step number. However, this field is not unique and it’s also not an integer (float).

😬

> [@JOINing two tables in an INSERT INTO](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/joining-two-tables-in-an-insert-into/110498/6):
>
> Is it actually a REAL? That's almost certainly not what you want. Just because a reason code happens to be something like digits.digits, doesn't mean you should represent it with REAL. If you do, then how do you distinguish between 123.1 and 123.10 and 123.100?

This should probably be a string (if your intention is to store basically a top level + sublevel key)... though, really, there's an argument for two columns - `step` and `substep` or whatever. That also makes ordering trivial in either SQL or Python.

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