Orcale SQL Tutorial
Order By
Oracle ORDER BY Clause
In Oracle, ORDER BY Clause is used to sort or re-arrange the records in the result set. The ORDER BY clause is only used with SELECT statement.
Syntax:
- SELECT expressions
- FROM tables
- WHERE conditions
- ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC ];
Parameters:
expressions: It specifies columns that you want to retrieve.
tables: It specifies the table name from where you want to retrieve records.
conditions: It specifies the conditions that must be fulfilled for the records to be selected.
ASC: It is an optional parameter that is used to sort records in ascending order.
DESC: It is also an optional parameter that is used to sort records in descending order.
Oracle ORDER BY Example: (without ASC/DESC attribute)
Let's take a table "supplier"
Supplier table:
- CREATE TABLE "SUPPLIER"
- ( "SUPPLIER_ID" NUMBER,
- "FIRST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000),
- "LAST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000)
- )
- /
Execute this Query:
- SELECT *
- FROM supplier
- ORDER BY last_name;
Output:
The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in ascending order.
Oracle ORDER BY Example: (sorting in descending order)
If you want to sort your result in descending order, you should use the DESC attribute in your ORDER BY clause:
Execute this Query:
- SELECT *
- FROM supplier
- ORDER BY last_name DESC;
Output
The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in descending order.