How to sort results with ORDER BY

Short answer

ORDER BY sorts the result set by one or more columns in ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order.

Steps

1. Sort ascending: SELECT * FROM products ORDER BY price ASC;
2. Sort descending: SELECT * FROM products ORDER BY price DESC;
3. Sort by multiple columns: SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY department ASC, last_name ASC;
4. Sort by expression: SELECT * FROM orders ORDER BY quantity * unit_price DESC;
5. Sort by column position: SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY 2 DESC;

Tips

• Always specify ASC or DESC explicitly in complex queries for clarity.
• Sorting on indexed columns is faster because the database can use the index order.

Common issues

• ORDER BY on calculated fields without an alias may be hard to maintain.
• Sorting large result sets without a limit can cause high memory usage and slow response times.r