How to use Order By Clause

Order By Clause in SQL Server

This Order By Clause tutorial guides you to how we can use order by clause in the SQL server.

ORDER BY clause is used to sort the records fetched from the database table. The ORDER BY clause is used with SELECT statements only.

When we use the SELECT statement to fetch data from a table, the order of rows in the result set is not maintained.

The SQL Server can return a result set with an unspecified order of rows.

The way it can return the result set in proper and well maintained then we have to use Order by clause.

Syntax:-

                  SELECT columns

                                            FROM table_name

where conditions

                                                                                                   ORDER BY expressions [ASC/DESC]

Parameters or Arguments:-

expressions

The columns on which we need to apply for the order by clause.

tables

The table from which you need to fetch data from the database.

WHERE conditions

This parameter is optional these conditions filter data fetched from the database table.

ASC

Optional. It sorts the result set in ascending order by expression 

DESC

Optional. It sorts the result set in descending order by expression.

SQL Server ORDER BY clause example

1. Order by clause on one column to order in ascending order

Note:- If not applied asc|desc after expression then it defaults fetch result with asc 

2. Order by clause on one column to order in descending order

this example returns the result set with firstname expression in descending order

3. Order by clause on the relative position

Relative position means result set is returned according to selecting column number as here firstname is at #1 in the select statement so the order by clause is applied on firstname as asc

4. Order by clause with both ASC and DESC