SQL ORDER BY

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the result.

Sort the Rows

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort the rows.

Orders:

Example

To display the company names in alphabetical order:

SELECT Company, OrderNumber FROM Orders
ORDER BY Company

Result:

Example

To display the company names in alphabetical order AND the OrderNumber in numerical order:

SELECT Company, OrderNumber FROM Orders
ORDER BY Company, OrderNumber

Result:

Example

To display the company names in reverse alphabetical order:

SELECT Company, OrderNumber FROM Orders
ORDER BY Company DESC

Result:

Example

To display the company names in reverse alphabetical order AND the OrderNumber in numerical order:

SELECT Company, OrderNumber FROM Orders
ORDER BY Company DESC, OrderNumber ASC

Result:

Notice that there are two equal company names (W3Schools) in the result above. The only time you will see the second column in ASC order would be when there are duplicated values in the first sort column, or a handful of nulls.

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