Explain following term: order by clause.

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written 6.1 years ago by

meghalikalyankar • 2.3k

The SQL ORDER BY clause is used to sort the data in ascending or descending order, based on one or more columns. Some databases sort the query results in an ascending order by default.

Syntax

The basic syntax of the ORDER BY clause is as follows −

SELECT column-list

FROM table_name

[WHERE condition]

[ORDER BY column1, column2, .. columnN] [ASC | DESC];

You can use more than one column in the ORDER BY clause. Make sure whatever column you are using to sort that column should be in the column-list.

Example

Consider the CUSTOMERS table having the following records −

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
1	Ramesh	32	Ahmedabad	2000.00
2	Khilan	25	Delhi	1500.00
3	Kaushik	23	Kota	2000.00
4	Chaitali	25	Mumbai	6500.00
5	Hardik	27	Bhopal	8500.00
6	Komal	22	MP	4500.00
7	Muffy	24	Indore	10000.00

The following code block has an example, which would sort the result in an ascending order by the NAME and the SALARY −

SQL> SELECT $$ FROM CUSTOMERS*

ORDER BY NAME, SALARY;

This would produce the following result −

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
4	CHAITALI	25	MUMBAI	6500.00
5	HARDIK	27	BHOPAL	8500.00
3	KAUSHIK	23	KOTA	2000.00
2	KHILAN	25	DELHI	1500.00
6	KOMAL	22	MP	4500.00
7	MUFFY	24	INDORE	10000.00
1	RAMESH	32	AHMEDABAD	2000.00

The following code block has an example, which would sort the result in the descending order by NAME.

SQL> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS

ORDER BY NAME DESC;

This would produce the following result −

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
1	RAMESH	32	AHMEDABAD	2000.00
7	MUFFY	24	INDORE	10000.00
6	KOMAL	22	MP	4500.00
2	KHILAN	25	DELHI	1500.00
3	KAUSHIK	23	KOTA	2000.00
5	HARDIK	27	BHOPAL	8500.00
4	CHAITALI	25	MUMBAI	6500.00

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