Order by in MS SQL Server
In this article, order by and terms related to order by will be discussed.
Introduction –
- There are some instances where the tables are to be arranged in a chronological order.
- While the users use the select statement to retrieve rows, one cannot guarantee that the rows are arranged in an order.
- To solve this, order by clause is being used.
Basic syntax:
select select_list from table_name order by
Example: Sample table-Student
Roll number | Name | Course |
---|---|---|
111 | Riya | CSE |
112 | Apoorva | ECE |
113 | Mina | Mech |
114 | Rita | Biotechnology |
115 | Veena | Chemical |
116 | Deepa | EEE |
If a user wants to arrange the names in an order then the query must be written as follows:
select roll number name course from student order by name
The output is:
Roll number | Name | Course |
---|---|---|
112 | Apoorva | ECE |
116 | Deepa | EEE |
113 | Mina | Mech |
114 | Rita | Biotechnology |
111 | Riya | Biotechnology |
115 | Veena | Chemical |
Note that the table is arranged in ascending order by default using the order by clause.
ASC | DESC :
- A user can arrange the columns in ascending or descending order using ASC or DESC respectively.
- ASC arranges the columns from lowest to highest
- DESC arranges the columns from highest to lowest.
- If there is a NULL column in the table, it will be treated as the lowest value.
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