ORDER BY Clause

The Sorting Order

Sorting Order For Single Column

DESC Key Word

By default, ORDER BY sorts data in ascending order, by specify DESC keyword to sort data in descending way.

SELECT * FROM [table]
WHERE [filters]
ORDER BY [column] DESC

Sorting Order For Multiple Columns

Sorting Multiple Columns

SQL can sort not only one column, based on how many column the table contains.

SELECT * FROM [table]
WHERE [filters]
ORDER BY [column1], [column2], [column3]

And for each column, can assign sorting order for them. Order by [column1], then by [column2], finally by [column3].

SELECT * FROM [table]
WHERE [filters]
ORDER BY [column1] DESC, [column2] DESC, [column3] DESC

Sorting Alias

You can also sort a alias.

SELECT [column1], [column2], [column3]|>[expr|func] AS [new_column_name] 
FROM [table]
WHERE [filters]
ORDER BY [column1] DESC, [column2] DESC, [new_column_name] DESC

Sorting By Selected Column Order

ORDER BY statement accepts the order of selected column as a alias of selected column name. This is NOT recommended for its possibility that the order of columns might change in the future. That might cause unexpected results.

SELECT [column1], [column2], [column3]
FROM [table]
WHERE [filters]
ORDER BY 1, 2, 3 DESC -- 1, 2, 3 stands for [column1]-[column3]