Sphinx 0.9.9 is great at searching full text, but treating actual strings as attributes takes some work.
Initially I employed the strategy of indexing my full text fields and storing them as attributes. E.g.:
sql_query = SELECT name, name AS name_ord FROM documents
sql_attr_str2ordinal = name_ord
This stores each attribute in lexical order. Meaning if your name’s are Apple, Aardvark, Button, Choco-room they would be given the ordinal 2, 1, 3, 4 respectively.
However, this is case-insensitive. So trying this approach:
sql_query = SELECT name, UPPER(name) AS name_ord FROM documents
sql_attr_str2ordinal = name_ord
Will allow for case-insensitive alphabetical sorting in Sphinx.