SQL ORDER BY

The ORDER BY command sorts the result set by a particular column either alphabetically or numerically.

Syntax

SELECT column_name
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name ASC | DESC;

It’s also possible to ORDER BY multiple columns by separating them with a comma.

SELECT column_name_1
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column_name_1 ASC | DESC, column_name_2 ASC | DESC;

This assumes column_name_1 and column_name_2 exist in table_name.

ORDER BY can be set in two ways:

• ASC is a keyword used to sort the results in ascending order (default).
• DESC is a keyword used to sort the results in descending order.

Example

The query below will sort by birth_date, in descending order:

SELECT *
FROM contacts
ORDER BY birth_date DESC;

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