SQL Reference - ORDER BY

Example

SELECT *
FROM Employees
ORDER BY LastName ASC;

Output

+------+----------+------------+
| EmpID| FirstName|    LastName|
+------+----------+------------+
|    3 |    David|     Adams  |
|    1 |    John |    Brown   |
|    4 |   Chris|     Smith  |
|    2 |   Alice|     White  |
+------+----------+------------+

Explanation

The query selects all records from the Employees table and orders them in ascending order (ASC) by the LastName column. Therefore, the result set is sorted from A to Z based on the employees’ last names. In case ASC is not specified, the sorting default is ascending order.

Example

SELECT name, age
FROM employees
ORDER BY age;

Output

| name  | age |
|-------|-----|
| John  | 23  |
| Jane  | 26  |
| Peter | 30  |
| Amy   | 33  |

Explanation

The Example provided is a SQL statement that retrieves employee names and their respective ages from the employees table. It organizes the returned data in ascending order based on the employees’ ages. The ORDER BY clause accomplishes this sorting.

Example

SELECT * FROM Employees
ORDER BY LastName ASC;

Output

EmployeeID  |  LastName  |  FirstName  |  BirthDate  |  Photo  |  Notes
------------|------------|-------------|-------------|---------|---------
4           |  Baker     |  Allan      |  1958-09-05 |  NULL   |  NULL
1           |  Smith     |  John       |  1965-12-08 |  NULL   |  NULL
2           |  White     |  Jane       |  1980-05-29 |  NULL   |  NULL
3           |  Johnson   |  Fred       |  1970-07-18 |  NULL   |  NULL

Explanation

The SELECT * FROM Employees statement is used to select all records from the Employees table.

The ORDER BY LastName ASC clause sorts the result set by the LastName in ascending order. If LastName were the same for two employees, it uses the order they appear in the table.

Example

SELECT * FROM Employees
ORDER BY Last_name ASC;

Output

| Employee_ID | Last_Name | First_Name | Salary |
|-------------|-----------|------------|--------|
| 4           | Abrams    | Jake       | 50000  |
| 2           | Brown     | Emily      | 65000  |
| 1           | Carson    | David      | 70000  |
| 3           | Smith     | Lisa       | 55000  |

Explanation

The SELECT statement orders the rows in ascending order (ASC) by the Last_name column. If two or more last names are the same, it orders these rows based on their positions in the database.

Example

SELECT * FROM Customers
ORDER BY Country;

Output

+----+---------+-----------+
| ID | Name    | Country   |
+----+---------+-----------+
| 3  | Antonio | Argentina |
| 1  | Alfreds | Germany   |
| 2  | Maria   | Mexico    |
+----+---------+-----------+

Explanation

The SQL ORDER BY keyword sorts the result-set in ascending (default) or descending order. In this instance, the query is ordering the customers by their respective countries in ascending order.