SQL ORDER BY Keyword

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the result-set.

The ORDER BY Keyword

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.

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

The "Persons" table:

P_Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
1	Karmen	Kasa	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans
2	Jacob	Mary	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans
3	Maxwell	Glen	Australia	Sydney
4	Tendulkar	Sachin	India	Mumbai

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:

P_Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
1	Karmen	Kasa	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans
4	Tendulkar	Sachin	India	Mumbai
3	Maxwell	Glen	Australia	Sydney
2	Jacob	Mary	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans

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:

P_Id	LastName	FirstName	Address	City
2	Jacob	Mary	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans
3	Maxwell	Glen	Australia	Sydney
4	Tendulkar	Sachin	India	Mumbai
1	Karmen	Kasa	Los Angels - USA	New Orleans