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The ORDER BY clause specifies one or more items used to sort the final query result set and the order for sorting the results.

Note:
If you do not specify an order in the ORDER BY clause, query results appear in no order.

For the complete syntax, see SELECT - SQL Command.

The detailed syntax for the ORDER BY clause appears as follows:

[ORDER BY Order_Item [ASC | DESC] [, ...]]

Parameters

[ORDER BY Order_Item


Specifies the item used to sort the final query result set.
  • A field in a FROM table or a subquery. You cannot specify a Blob or General type field.

    Note:
    If the ORDER BY clause is applied to a UNION operation, the field should also be a Select_Item in the last SELECT clause, not a subquery.

  • A field alias from the SELECT list.

    Note:
    If the ORDER BY clause is applied to a UNION operation, the alias should be a Select_Item in the last SELECT clause.

  • A numeric expression indicating the location of the column in the result table. The leftmost column is number 1.

[ASC]


Specifies an ascending order for the query results. ASC is the default order for ORDER BY.
[DESC]


Specifies a descending order for the query results.

Remarks

The following code shows a summary of the main clauses of the SELECT - SQL Command:

В Copy Code
SELECT Select_List
   FROM Table_List
...[WITH (BUFFERING = lExpr)]
   [WHERE Conditions]
   [GROUP BY Column_List]
   [HAVING Conditions]
   [UNION Clause]
   [ORDER BY Column_List]
   [INTO Clause | TO Clause ] 
   [Additional_Display_Options]

For more information about a particular clause of the SQL SELECT command, see the following topics:

Example

The following example organizes results of a query using the ORDER BYВ Order_Item clause. The example displays the Country, PostalCode, and Company fields for those records in the Customer table in ascending order, by default.

В Copy Code
CLOSE ALL
CLOSE DATABASES
OPEN DATABASE (HOME(2) + 'Data\TestData')
SELECT country, postalcode, company ;
   FROM customer ;
   ORDER BY country, postalcode, company

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