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 "student" table:

Student _No	Student_Name	Address	Year_Study	Sex	Date_of_birth	Course_No
ST100	K.Ranjan	Kandy	1	Male	17/01/1988	C1
ST101	N.Kumanan	Jaffna	2	Male	15/12/1989	C2
ST102	S.Ranjini	Vavuniya	1	Female	17/01/1989	C1
ST103	K.Dias	Colombo	3	Male	22/07/1987	C1
ST104	A.Kavitha	Matara	3	Female	20/03/1985	C2
ST105	L.Lavanya	Galle	2	Female	22/04/1989	C2
ST106	G.Moorthy	Jaffna	2	Male	12/01/1986	C1
ST107	F.Nathan	Matara	2	Male	29/01/1990	C3
ST108	A.H.M.Akmal	Puttalam	1	Male	12/12/1990	C3

Now we want to select all the student from the table above, however, we want to sort the persons by their Date of birth.

We use the following SELECT statement:

SELECT*FROM student ORDER BY Date_of_Birth;

The result-set will look like this:

Student_No	Student_Name	Address	Year_Study	Sex	Date_of_birth	Course_No
ST104	A.Kavitha	Matara	3	Female	1985-03-20	C2
ST106	G.Moorthy	Jaffna	2	Male	1986-01-12	C1
ST103	K.Dias	Colombo	3	Male	1987-07-22	C1
ST100	K.Ranjan	Kandy	1	Male	1988-01-17	C1
ST102	S.Ranjini	Vavuniya	1	Female	1989-01-17	C1
ST105	L.Lavanya	Galle	2	Female	1989-04-22	C2
ST101	N.Kumanan	Jaffna	2	Male	1989-12-15	C2
ST107	F.Nathan	Matara	2	Male	1990-01-29	C3
ST108	A.H.M.Akmal	Puttalam	1	Male	1990-12-12	C3