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- ORDER BY clause in SQL is used to sort the data selected from a table. ORDER BY clause sorts the data either in ascending order or descending order using one or more columns.
- By default, the result set of the query is sorted by ascending order.
- Syntax for SQL ORDER BY statement is given below.
Syntax for SQL ORDER BY clause:
| Syntax to sort in ascending order | SELECT column_name1, column_name2, etc FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name1, column_name2, etc ASC; |
| Syntax to sort in descending order | SELECT column_name1,
column_name2, etc FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name1, column_name2, etc DESC; |
Note:
- To sort in ascending order, we no need to use keyword “ASC” at the end of the query as all SQL query results are sorted by ascending order by default.
- The columns name those we sort using ORDER BY, should be available in columns list we select.
Example for how to use SQL ORDER BY clause:
Please consider the following table with few records as given below.
Table name (for example): student
Column names in this table: Student_ID, Student_name, City and Age
Available records: 4 rows
- To sort the data in ascending order, please execute below query. This query will fetch all records available in this table and then will sort by ascending order.
SQL query:
SELECT * from student
ORDER BY Student_name ASC;
SQL query Output:
- To sort the data in descending order, please execute below query. This query will fetch all records available in this table and then will sort by descending order.
SQL query:
SELECT * from student
ORDER BY Student_name DESC;
SQL query Output:
