I've gone round and round with this trying different things unsuccessfully.

The goal is to use a secondary table to create a select list in the editor (New) while at the same time row ordering is working. I can get either to work separately but not harmoniously together.

The main table in menu_items(2). In the server side php file we have:

/* PUBLISH */
Field::inst( 'menu_items2.publish' )
  ->options( Options::inst()
  ->table( 'publish_options' )
  ->value( 'publish' )
  ->label( 'publish' )
  )
  ->validator( Validate::dbValues() ),
Field::inst( 'publish_options.publish' ),
/* PUBLISH */

Field::inst( 'menu_items2.rowOrder' )->validator( 'Validate::numeric' )

with some regular fields. Then a left join with standard row ordering processing:

/* JOIN /
->leftJoin( 'publish_options', 'publish_options.publish_id', '=', 'menu_items2.id' )
/ JOIN */

In the datatable page file I have:

fields: [ {
    label: 'Order:',
    name: 'menu_items2.rowOrder',
    fieldInfo: 'This field can only be edited via click and drag.'
  }, {
    label: 'Title:',
    name: 'menu_items2.title'
  }, {
    label: 'Publish:',
    name: 'menu_items2.publish',
    type: 'select'
  }, {
  some other fields ...
  }

Columns:

columns: [
  { data: 'menu_items2.rowOrder', className: 'reorder' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.id' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.title' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.publish' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.access' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.alias' },
  { data: 'menu_items2.menu' },
  { data: null, render: function ( data, type, row ) {
    return '<a href="update-webpage.php?article_id='+data.id+'"><span class="fa fa-edit">update</span></a>';
    }
  }

And:

rowReorder: {
  dataSrc: 'menu_items2.rowOrder',
  editor: editor
},

and:

editor
.on( 'postCreate postRemove', function () {
table.ajax.reload( null, false );
} )
.on( 'initCreate', function () {
editor.field( 'menu_items2.rowOrder' ).enable();
} )
.on( 'initEdit', function () {
editor.field( 'menu_items2.rowOrder' ).disable();
} );

Row ordering works but inconsistently. The other thing I see with row reordering is that rather than create a natural sequence like 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ... it swaps out numbers, ids. So if you've either deleted an item or added an item with an odd order number you can end up with gaps in the sequence.

See a live example with a demo table at: http://www.dottedi.biz/demo/code/public/dt/index.php