How to Use ORDER BY with SQL?

Welcome back to our SQL tutorial series! So far, we’ve covered the basics of SQL, how to use SELECT and SELECT DISTINCT, and how to filter results with the WHERE clause. In this article, we’re going to explore the ORDER BY clause, which allows you to sort your query results in a specified order. Sorting data is crucial for organizing and analyzing it effectively, and ORDER BY makes this task straightforward.

Understanding ORDER BY

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort the result set of a query by one or more columns. You can sort the data in ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order. By default, ORDER BY sorts the data in ascending order.

Basic Syntax of ORDER BY

The basic syntax of the ORDER BY clause is as follows:

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column1 [ASC|DESC], column2 [ASC|DESC], ...;

Let’s look at some practical examples to understand how to use the ORDER BY clause effectively.

Example Table: employees

We’ll continue to use the employees table for our examples:

Sorting Results in Ascending Order

To sort the employees by their names in ascending order, you use:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY name ASC;

This command returns:

Since ASC is the default, you can omit it:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY name;

Sorting Results in Descending Order

To sort the employees by their salaries in descending order, you use:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY salary DESC;

This command returns:

Sorting by Multiple Columns

You can sort by multiple columns by specifying them in the ORDER BY clause. For example, to sort by position in ascending order and by salary in descending order:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY position ASC, salary DESC;

This command returns:

Here, employees are first sorted by their position, and within each position, they are sorted by their salary in descending order.

Using WHERE with ORDER BY

You can combine the WHERE clause with ORDER BY to filter and then sort the results. For example, to find and sort the names of employees who are Data Analysts by their salaries in ascending order:

SELECT name, salary FROM employees WHERE position = 'Data Analyst' ORDER BY salary ASC;

This command returns:

Using Aliases with ORDER BY

Sometimes, you might use aliases for columns in your queries. You can also use these aliases in the ORDER BY clause. For example:

SELECT name, salary AS annual_salary FROM employees ORDER BY annual_salary DESC;

This command returns the employees sorted by their alias annual_salary in descending order.

Conclusion

The ORDER BY clause is a powerful tool for sorting your query results in SQL. Whether you need to sort data in ascending or descending order, by one or multiple columns, ORDER BY gives you the flexibility to organize your data effectively. Understanding how to use ORDER BY will help you make your queries more precise and your data analysis more insightful.

In our next tutorial, we’ll explore more advanced SQL topics and commands. Stay tuned and happy coding!