ORDER BY

01The problem

Finance is reviewing the most valuable bookings from the first week of January 2026. They want the biggest charges at the top, so they can check those first.

Operations wants the routes listed from the longest journey to the shortest, to plan staffing for long-haul shipments.

A database doesn't promise to return rows in any particular order. If order matters, you have to ask for it.

02The concept

ORDER BY sorts the result. It comes after WHERE.

• ASC sorts smallest to largest, A to Z, earliest to latest. It's the default, so you can leave it out.
• DESC sorts largest to smallest, Z to A, latest to earliest.
• You can sort by several columns. The second column only decides the order when the first column has a tie.

The order of the clauses you've learned so far is always:

SELECT … FROM … WHERE … ORDER BY …

03Example

SELECT shipment_id, booking_date, freight_charge
FROM shipments
WHERE booking_date BETWEEN '2026-01-01' AND '2026-01-07'
ORDER BY freight_charge DESC;

04Walkthrough

• WHERE first narrows the data down to the first week of January 2026.
• ORDER BY freight_charge DESC then puts the most expensive shipment first.

Now sort by two columns: routes by mode, and within each mode, longest journeys first.

SELECT origin, destination, mode, target_transit_days
FROM routes
ORDER BY mode, target_transit_days DESC;

mode sorts A to Z (Air, Road, Sea). Inside each mode, target_transit_days DESC puts the longest routes first. Each column in ORDER BY has its own direction.

05Practice

06Challenge

07Check your understanding