The SQL ORDER BY clause is used in the SELECT statement to order the SQL query result set. With the ORDER BY clause, you can sort the result set in ascending or decending order.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the ORDER BY clause in SQL statement. We will walkthrough the "ORDER BY" syntax with detailed explantions and examples.

The ORDER BY clause Syntax

The syntax of a ORDER BY clause is as follows:

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Parameters Explanations

column_name

table_name

condition

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Example - Using ORDERR BY clause to sort the query result in ascending order

In this tutorial, we will use the well-known Northwind sample database for demonstration purpose. Below is a portion of data selected from the employee table:

id	last_name	first_name	job_title
1	Freehafer	Nancy	Sales Representative
2	Cencini	Andrew	Vice President, Sales
3	Kotas	Jan	Sales Representative
4	Sergienko	Mariya	Sales Representative
5	Thorpe	Steven	Sales Manager
6	Neipper	Michael	Sales Representative
7	Zare	Robert	Sales Representative
8	Giussani	Laura	Sales Coordinator
9	Hellung-Larsen	Anne	Sales Representative

Here is the example of selecting the total number of employee of each job title



The result is:

id	last_name	first_name	job_title
8	Giussani	Laura	Sales Coordinator
5	Thorpe	Steven	Sales Manager
1	Freehafer	Nancy	Sales Representative
9	Hellung-Larsen	Anne	Sales Representative
3	Kotas	Jan	Sales Representative
6	Neipper	Michael	Sales Representative
4	Sergienko	Mariya	Sales Representative
7	Zare	Robert	Sales Representative
2	Cencini	Andrew	Vice President, Sales

In the above example, we have used the ORDER BY clause to order the result firstly by the column: job_title. Then for all the records with the same job_title, they will be order by the last_name in ascending order.

Example - Using ORDER BY clause to sort the query result in decending order

Next, we tried to use the ORDER BY clause to sort the SQL query result in the decending order. In the above example, you may notice that if you don't specific the order attribute (ASC or DESC), the default attribute used is ASC. However, to order the records decendingly, you need to provide the attribute DESC in the query.

Let's issue the following SQL:



The result is:

id	last_name	first_name	job_title
9	Hellung-Larsen	Anne	Sales Representative
8	Giussani	Laura	Sales Coordinator
7	Zare	Robert	Sales Representative
6	Neipper	Michael	Sales Representative
5	Thorpe	Steven	Sales Manager
4	Sergienko	Mariya	Sales Representative
3	Kotas	Jan	Sales Representative
2	Cencini	Andrew	Vice President, Sales
1	Freehafer	Nancy	Sales Representative

In the above example, we have use the ORDER BY clause to select the records from the employees table and display the result with decending id value.