SQL ORDER BY two columns, whichever is higher

Question

I have a table that looks like so

ITEM_NAME     | NUM_SOLD | NUM_VIEWS
Apple         |       50 |        75
Orange        |       40 |        85
Pear          |       80 |        70
Cherry        |       15 |        60

I want to sort this by whichever number is highest in either of the last two columns.

So the above table would be sorted like so:

ITEM_NAME     | NUM_SOLD | NUM_VIEWS
Orange        |       40 |        85
Pear          |       80 |        70
Apple         |       50 |        75
Cherry        |       15 |        60

You can see that by the numbers I punched in, they're mostly sorted by NUM_VIEWS, but because Pear has a higher NUM_SOLD value than either of Apple's values, it gets sorted between Orange and Apple.

This Apple and Pear example is what I can't get to work properly.

Answer 1

ORDER BY GREATEST(num_sold, num_views)

(See GREATEST(value1,value2,...) in §12.3.2 "Comparison Functions and Operators" of the MySQL 5.6 Reference Manual.)