Purpose

Specifies how the rows are to be sorted.

Syntax

ORDER BY sort_expression [DESC | ASC] [,...]

where:

sort_expression
is either the name of a column, a column alias, a SQL expression, or the positioned number of the column or expression in the select list to use.

The default behavior is an ascending (ASC) sort.

Example

To sort by last_name and then by first_name, you could use either of the following Select statements:

SELECT emp_id, last_name, first_name FROM emp 
ORDER BY last_name, first_name

or

SELECT emp_id, last_name, first_name FROM emp 
ORDER BY 2,3

In the second example, last_name is the second item in the Select list, so ORDER BY 2,3 sorts by last_name and then by first_name.

See also

SQL Expressions