SQLite Group By with Order By not working - iphone

Question

Need some stack overflow love. Read the other questions related to group by and sort by and those answers don't seem to work for me. I am not really strong in the finer details of db statements and think there is some dependency or conflict between group and order by statements I am missing.
I have a table (itemOptions) that holds all the options of an item and all the possible values for those options. Think multiple select/drop down boxes for an item and the list of values for each drop down. And unfortunately I can't change the db structure, as a web service is providing the sqlite file.
Here's the structure:
absTtemId optionName optionPosition valueName valuePosition
item1 size 1 small 1
item1 size 1 medium 2
item1 size 1 large 3
item1 color 2 white 1
item1 color 2 red 2
item1 color 2 yellow 3
item2 name 1 willis 1
item2 name 1 smith 2
item2 name 1 bowman 3
The query needs to return optionsNames for a given item ordered by optionPosition, and then a list of valueNames for each option ordered by valueposition, like this
option valueNames
size small, medium, large
color white, red, yellow
I am able to get the grouping of valueNames by option to work, but when I try to add sorting anywhere, sqlite throws errors.
Here's my current sql statement that returns these results, however option and valueNames are never in order.
SELECT optionName, group_concat(valueName)
FROM itemOptions
WHERE absItemId = 'item1'
GROUP BY optionName
option valueNames
size medium, small, large
color yellow, red, white
Here's some of my failed attempts at adding sorting for valueName and optionName
SELECT optionName, group_concat(valueName ORDER BY valuePosition DESC)
FROM itemOptions
WHERE absItemId = 'item1'
GROUP BY optionName
EDIT: sporting for optionName grouping is working now with this. Only valueName sorting within the group_concat not working.
SELECT optionName, group_concat(valueName)
FROM itemOptions
WHERE absItemId = 'item1'
GROUP BY optionName
ORDER BY optionPosition

Answer 1

try
SELECT a.optionName, group_concat(a.valueName)
FROM (SELECT * FROM itemOptions ORDER BY valuePosition ASC) As a
WHERE a.absItemId = 'item1'
GROUP BY a.optionName
ORDER BY a.optionName