ORDER BY | BUS 104 – SQL Exam

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ORDER BY explained

Remember lining up for attendance as a kid in elementary school?

Let's say we've got the following students in a classroom…

…and that we need them to line up for attendance in alphabetical order.

So, they scramble around until they finally get into proper order.

This is exactly what ORDER BY statements do.

ORDER BY statements are used to sort results based on a field or aggregate function.

How to code an ORDER BY

Here's the template for an ORDER BY statement:

ORDER BY column(s);

Let's code one with the example above.

Below is the table of students in the classroom.

Let's set up a SELECT and FROM statement to start our query.

SELECT column(s)
FROM database_name.table_name;

What's going to go in the column(s)? We're just going to place "*".

Why? Because we want to see each of the fields in the students table.

SELECT *
FROM database_name.table_name;

For our FROM statement's database_name, let's just say the database is called school. We already know the table_name is students.

SELECT *
FROM school.students;

When we execute this query, we get the following results.

Notice how the students above are in the exact same order as they are in classroom currently before scrambling into order.

Now, we can implement our ORDER BY statement.

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY column(s);

What's going to go in our column(s)?

Well, for now, all we need to do is have the students be listed in alphabetical order, like so:

So, we'll place the name field as our columns.

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY name;

When we execute this, we get the following results:

This matches what we were wanting. The students are now in alphabetical order by name!

What if we wanted the students to line up in reverse alphabetical order by name, like so?

We'd use the "DESC" keyword after name!

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY name DESC;

The DESC keyword means descending. It sorts our results by name in descending, or reverse, order.

When executing this query, we get the following results.

Perfect, now students are sorted in reverse alphabetical order!

Using ORDER BY with multiple columns

With ORDER BY statements, you're able to place multiple fields in ORDER BY statements. Let's try sorting by shirt_color as well.

We want our query to first sort by name in descending order, then sort by shirt_color.

So, we'll place shirt_color after "name DESC".

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY name DESC, shirt_color;

And when we execute this, we get the following results:

So, how'd we get these results?

Because first, we sorted by name in descending order, and then we sorted by shirt_color.

That's why the shirt_color are the main field in alphabetical order, because they were sorted last.

If this is still confusing to you, notice how Lila and Bella alone are still in reverse alphabetical order. This is because the students were first sorted by name in reverse alphabetical order, and then Lila and Bella were brought to the top because their shirt_color (Blue) was first alphabetically.

Using ORDER BY with numeric values

We've only been using ORDER BY with string values so far. But, you can use it with numeric values as well.

For example, if we wanted to sort our students by the id field, we could do the following:

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY id;

And when we run this query, we'd get:

If we wanted to, we could also sort them in descending order by id. To do so, we'd place DESC after "id"…

SELECT *
FROM school.students
ORDER BY id DESC;

…and when we'd run the query, we'd get the following results:

See? Now the students are sorted in descending order by id.

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Now that we know how to sort our results, let's move onto Troubleshooting errors and go over a couple common issues you might run into while coding. That way, you're prepared to face them on your exam!

Concepts

Each exam concept broken down with relatable situations to your life!

	Tools	SQL Follow-along Guide (FREE)
	Lesson	What is SQL?
	Lesson	SELECT & FROM
	Lesson	JOIN
	Lesson	WHERE
	Lesson	GROUP BY
	Lesson	HAVING
	Lesson	ORDER BY
	Lesson	Troubleshooting errors

Practice Problems

Include step-by-step explanations through each part of the problem!

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Adam Wise

I’m a Miami University (OH) 2021 alumni who majored in Information Systems. At Miami, I tutored students in Python, SQL, JavaScript, and HTML for 2+ years. I’m a huge fantasy football fan, Marvel nerd, and love hanging out with my friends here in Chicago where I currently reside.