Sorting Data with ORDER BY

In SQL, you use the ORDER BY clause to sort the results of a query. Sorting helps you organize data in a way that makes it easier to analyze and understand.

• Use ORDER BY to sort results by one or more columns;
• By default, ORDER BY sorts data in ascending order (ASC);
• You can specify descending order using DESC;
• You can sort by multiple columns to further organize your results.

Basic Syntax

To sort by a single column in ascending order:

SELECT * FROM country
ORDER BY name ASC;

To sort by a single column in descending order:

SELECT * FROM country
ORDER BY population DESC;

To sort by multiple columns:

SELECT * FROM country
ORDER BY continent ASC, name ASC;

This query first sorts rows by the continent column. If two or more rows have the same continent, it sorts those rows by the name column.

Sorting your data with ORDER BY makes your queries more flexible and your results easier to interpret.