Sorting Results with ORDER BY

ORDER BY controls the order rows come back in. Without it, a database makes no guarantee about row order — never rely on "the order it happens to come back in."

Basic sorting

SELECT first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY salary;

By default, sorting is ascending (ASC) — smallest/earliest first. Use DESC for descending:

SELECT first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC;

Sorting by multiple columns

Ties in the first column are broken by the second, and so on:

SELECT department_id, first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY department_id ASC, salary DESC;

This sorts employees into department order, and within each department, highest paid first.

Sorting by column position

You can refer to columns by their position in the SELECT list (1-based) — handy for quick queries, but avoid it in real code since it breaks if you reorder columns:

SELECT first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY 2 DESC;

Combining with LIMIT / TOP

Sorting and limiting together is one of the most common query patterns — "top 5 highest earners":

-- SQLite / PostgreSQL / MySQL
SELECT first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC
LIMIT 5;

-- SQL Server
SELECT TOP 5 first_name, salary FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC;

Open the Code Playground, pick any SQL engine (SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQL Server), and paste these queries in directly — the practice database above is already loaded for you, every time.

-- A ready-to-query practice database is loaded automatically before every run —
-- no CREATE TABLE needed. Available tables:
--   departments  (id, name, location)
--   employees    (id, first_name, last_name, email, department_id, job_title, salary, hire_date, manager_id)
--   customers    (id, customer_name, city, country, signup_date)
--   products     (id, product_name, category, price, stock_quantity)
--   orders       (id, customer_id, employee_id, order_date, status)
--   order_items  (id, order_id, product_id, quantity, unit_price)

SELECT * FROM employees WHERE department_id = 1;