SQL Order By Clause

SQL Order By clause is used to short the data in ascending or descending order on the basis of query result. It does not short the actual table data but shorts the query result data.

The SQL Order By keyword sorts the records in ascending order by default. To sort the records in a descending order, you can use the DESC keyword.

SQL - ORDER BY Syntax:

SELECT column_name, column_name

FROM table_name

ORDER BY column_name ASC|DESC, column_name ASC|DESC;

 

Parameters

[ORDER BY Order_Item]

        Specifies the item used to sort the final query result set.

 [ASC]

        Specifies an ascending order for the query results. ASC is the default order for ORDER BY.

[DESC]

       Specifies a descending order for the query results.

EXAMPLES

Please Read the Previous Article for SQL-Table Structure  

ORDER BY ASC By Default Example

The following SQL statement selects all Employee from the " Employee" table, sorted By Default ASCENDING by the "First_name" column. If you have not use ASC or ASCENDING in Query.

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Employee]

ORDER BY First_name;

ORDER BY ASC Example

The following SQL statement selects all Employee from the " Employee" table, sorted ASCENDING by the "First_name" column.

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Employee]

ORDER BY First_name ASC;

ORDER BY DESC Example

The following SQL statement selects all Employee from the " Employee" table, sorted DESCENDING by the "First_name" column.

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Employee]

ORDER BY First_name DESC;

ORDER BY ASC and DESC in Multiple Column Example

The following SQL statement selects all Employee from the " Employee" table, sorted ASCENDING by the "First_name" column and sorted DESCENDING by the "Department" column.

SELECT * FROM [dbo].[Employee]

ORDER BY First_name ASC, Department DESC;