The SQL ORDER BY Keyword

The ORDER BY keyword is used to sort the result-set in ascending or descending order.

The ORDER BY keyword sorts the records in ascending order by default. To sort the records in descending order, use the DESC keyword.

ORDER BY Syntax

SELECT column1, column2, …
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column1, column2, … ASC|DESC;

Demo Database

Below is a selection from the “Customers” table in the Northwind sample database:

The following SQL statement selects all customers from the “Customers” table, sorted by the “Country” column:

SELECT * FROM Customers
ORDER BY CustomerID;

This Result

ORDER BY Several Columns Example

The following SQL statement selects all customers from the “Customers” table, sorted by the “CustomerID” and the “PostalCode” column. This means that it orders by CustomerID, but if some rows have the same CustomerID, it orders them by PostalCode:

SELECT * FROM Customers
ORDER BY CustomerID, PostalCode;

ORDER BY DESC Example

The following SQL statement selects all customers from the “Customers” table, sorted DESCENDING by the “Country” column:

SELECT * FROM Customers
ORDER BY CustomerID DESC;

This is result

ORDER BY ASC Example

The following SQL statement selects all customers from the “Customers” table, sorted abbreviation by the “Country” column:

SELECT * FROM Customers
ORDER BY CustomerID ASC;

This is result