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.

SQL ORDER BY Syntax

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

ORDER BY Example

The "Persons" table:

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:

ORDER BY DESC Example

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:

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