The ORDER BY clause specifies one or more items used to sort the final query result set and the order for sorting the results.
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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.
-
A field in a FROM table or a subquery. You cannot specify a Blob or General type field.
- [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:
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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.
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CLOSE ALL CLOSE DATABASES OPEN DATABASE (HOME(2) + 'Data\TestData') SELECT country, postalcode, company ; FROM customer ; ORDER BY country, postalcode, company |