SQL Order By

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the result-set by a specified column.

The ORDER BY keyword sort the records in ascending order by default.

If you want to sort the records in a descending order, you can use the DESC keyword.

SQL ORDER BY Syntax

SELECT column_name(s) FROM table_name ORDER BY column_name(s) ASC|DESC

ORDER BY Example

The "Persons" table:

Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
1	Navis	Anto	Madras	TVL
2	Ji	Bala	Bombay	TVL
3	Christopher	Franklin	America	KK
4	Nilsen	Tom	Vingvn 23	KK

Now we want to select all the persons from the table above, however, we want to sort the persons by their last name.

We use the following SELECT statement:

SELECT * FROM Persons ORDER BY LastName

The result-set will look like this:

Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
1	Navis	Anto	Madras	TVL
4	Nilsen	Tom	Vingvn 23	KK
3	Christopher	Franklin	America	KK
2	Ji	Bala	Bombay	TVL

ORDER BY DESC Example

Now we want to select all the persons from the table above, however, we want to sort the persons descending by their last name.

We use the following SELECT statement:

SELECT * FROM Persons ORDER BY LastName DESC

The result-set will look like this:

Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
2	Ji	Bala	Bombay	TVL
3	Christopher	Franklin	America	KK
4	Nilsen	Tom	Vingvn 23	KK
1	Navis	Anto	Madras	TVL