Rails ActiveRecord Order by a Function

Of course you can pass functions in the order clause through ActiveRecord finders:

	@foos = Foo.find(:all,
	:conditions => conditions,
	:order => 'CONVERT(INT, fiscal_year), CONVERT(INT, fiscal_month)')

view raw gistfile1.rb hosted with ❤ by GitHub

In the above case a Foo has fiscal_year and fiscal_month columns unfortunately stored as VARCHAR(255) containing, for example "2008" and "7". While the sorting will work that query will be able to leverage an index on these columns only if the database used can create indices that include functions. I'm not sure which databases can do this. From a quick look at the SQL Server and MySQL documentation it doesn't appear that either of these databases can do this.