Recipe2.1.Returning Query Results in a Specified Order

Recipe 2.1. Returning Query Results in a Specified Order

Problem

You want to display the names, job, and salaries of employees in department 10 in order based on their salary (from lowest to highest). You want to return the following result set:

 ENAME       JOB               SAL ----------  ---------  ---------- MILLER      CLERK            1300 CLARK       MANAGER          2450 KING        PRESIDENT        5000 

Solution

Use the ORDER BY clause:

 1 select ename,job,sal 2   from emp 3  where deptno = 10 4  order by sal asc 

Discussion

The ORDER BY clause allows you to order the rows of your result set. The solution sorts the rows based on SAL in ascending order. By default, ORDER BY will sort in ascending order, and the ASC clause is therefore optional. Alternatively, specify DESC to sort in descending order:

  select ename,job,sal   from emp  where deptno = 10  order by sal desc ENAME       JOB               SAL ----------  ---------  ---------- KING        PRESIDENT        5000 CLARK       MANAGER          2450 MILLER      CLERK            1300 

You need not specify the name of the column on which to sort. You can instead specify a number representing the column. The number starts at 1 and matches the items in the SELECT list from left to right. For example:

  select ename,job,sal   from emp  where deptno = 10  order by 3 desc ENAME       JOB               SAL ----------  ---------  ---------- KING        PRESIDENT        5000 CLARK       MANAGER          2450 MILLER      CLERK            1300 

The number 3 in this example's ORDER BY clause corresponds to the third column in the SELECT list, which is SAL.