SQL ORDER BY Clause

The SQL ORDER BY clause is used for sorting data in ascending and descending order based on one or more columns.

Some databases sort query results in ascending order by default.

SQL ORDER BY syntax:

SELECT expressions
FROM tables
WHERE conditions
ORDER BY expression [ASC | DESC];

Let us take a CUSTOMERS table having the following records:

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
1	Himani gupta	21	Modinagar	22000
2	Shiva tiwari	22	Bhopal	21000
3	Ajeet bhargav	45	Meerut	65000
4	Ritesh yadav	36	Azamgarh	26000
5	Balwant singh	45	Varanasi	36000
6	Mahesh sharma	26	Mathura	22000

This is an example that would sort the result in ascending order by NAME and SALARY.

SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS
ORDER BY NAME, SALARY;

This would produce the following result.

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
3	Ajeet bhargav	45	Meerut	65000
5	Balwant singh	45	Varanasi	36000
1	Himani gupta	21	Modinagar	22000
6	Mahesh sharma	26	Mathura	22000
4	Ritesh yadav	36	Azamgarh	26000
2	Shiva tiwari	22	Bhopal	21000

This is an example to sort the result in descending order by NAME.

SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS
ORDER BY NAME DESC;

This would produce the following result.

ID	NAME	AGE	ADDRESS	SALARY
2	Shiva tiwari	22	Bhopal	21000
4	Ritesh yadav	36	Azamgarh	26000
6	Mahesh sharma	26	Mathura	22000
1	Himani gupta	21	Modinagar	22000
5	Balwant singh	45	Varanasi	36000
3	Ajeet bhargav	45	Meerut	65000