Order By

Tihomir Babic

The ORDER BY Clause in SQL Window Functions

In this article, you’ll get an overview of ORDER BY in window functions. You’ll learn how it compares to PARTITION BY and the regular ORDER BY all accompanied by examples and explanations. If you want to create reports that go beyond simple aggregations, you’ll need SQL window functions. Window functions help you create rankings, compute running totals and moving averages, and find the difference between rows. To use window functions effectively, you must understand the role of the ORDER BY clause.

Dominika Florczykowska

What Does ORDER BY 1 Mean in SQL?

Have you ever seen the "ORDER BY 1" syntax in SQL queries and wondered what it means? In this article, we'll explore this syntax, clarify its purpose, and make it easier to grasp. Whether you're an experienced SQL user or just starting to explore this language, you've likely encountered the ORDER BY clause before. In SQL, the ORDER BY clause is used to sort the rows in a table based on one or more columns.

Tihomir Babic

Using GROUP BY and ORDER BY Together: A Guide

Untangling how to use two basic SQL clauses – GROUP BY and ORDER BY – in one query. GROUP BY and ORDER BY are basic SQL clauses. As such, they are taught relatively early in the learning process. And they usually don’t present a big hurdle to beginners. However, using GROUP BY and ORDER BY together can be confusing. By the end of this article, your confusion on this subject will go away.

Himanshu Kathuria

SQL ORDER BY Clause with 7 Examples

Get to know the SQL ORDER BY clause! Our practical and easy examples will help you understand its syntax, common uses, and best practices. SQL or Structured Query Language lets you “talk” to a database. It enables you to create, retrieve and manipulate the data in a relational database. This language has become so ubiquitous that hardly any data-related field has been untouched by it. If you’re interested in the SQL ORDER BY clause, I’m assuming you have either already started learning SQL or are planning to start it soon.

How to Sort in SQL

Problem: You would like to sort the result of an SQL query in ascending or descending order. Example: Our database has a table named salary_information with data in the columns id, first_name, last_name, and monthly_earnings. We want to sort the employees by their monthly_earnings in descending order. idfirst_namelast_namemonthly_earnings 1CalvinRios3500 2AlanPaterson4000 3KurtEvans2300 4AlexWatkins5500 Solution: We will use an ORDER BY clause.

Andrew Bone

How to Sort Values in a Specific Order in SQL

Sometimes you will be required to order your data in a particular way, and often the use of typical sort modifiers like ASC and DESC are not enough. This article will show you how to use the CASE statement to order your data exactly how you need it to be. Have you ever needed to order your data in a very specific way? One of the best methods for handling complex sorting is using CASE.

Andrew Bone

What Is the SQL GROUPING SETS Clause, and How Do You Use it?

GROUPING SETS are groups, or sets, of columns by which rows can be grouped together. Instead of writing multiple queries and combining the results with a UNION, you can simply use GROUPING SETS. GROUPING SETS in SQL can be considered an extension of the GROUP BY clause. It allows you to define multiple grouping sets in the same query. Let’s look at its syntax and how it can be equivalent to a GROUP BY with multiple UNION ALL clauses.

Kateryna Koidan

A Detailed Guide to SQL ORDER BY

It’s often necessary to display the output of SQL query in specific order rather than arbitrarily. In this article, I’ll explain the many ways you can do it with the SQL ORDER BY clause. To sort records in SQL, you’ll need to use the ORDER BY clause.  In this article, I’ll explain in detail how to use ORDER BY to sort output by one or more columns, in ascending (A-Z) or descending (Z-A) order, and by using existing column(s) or using column(s) calculated by an aggregate function.

Kateryna Koidan

What Does ORDER BY Do?

When analyzing data, it often helps to have rows ordered in a specific way. In this article, I’ll use multiple examples to show how SQL ORDER BY sorts data according to one or more columns in ascending or descending order. Introduction to ORDER BY By default, the order of rows in the output of an SQL query is arbitrary. If you want to sort the output in a particular order, you’ll need to use the ORDER BY keyword.

Kateryna Koidan

How ORDER BY and NULL Work Together in SQL

Do NULL values come first or last when you use ORDER BY? Are they considered higher or lower than non-NULL values? In this article, I’ll explain how different relational databases treat NULL values when sorting output and how to change the default behavior of the ORDER BY clause. When LearnSQL users practice the ORDER BY clause in our SQL Basics course, they often ask why NULL values appear first in the output and how they can change this behavior.

How to Order Rows by Group Sum in SQL

Problem: You’d like to order rows by the sums generated by a group of records. Example: Our database has a table named training with data in four columns: id, login, year, and score. idloginyearscore 1Andy201824 2Lucy201925 3Andy201920 4Lucy201816 5Gary201918 6Gary201819 7Gary201722 8Lucy201721 9Andy201726 Let’s get the login name of each player along with the total sum of score across all years, putting records in descending order according to players’ total scores.

Shanika Wickramasinghe

Difference between GROUP BY and ORDER BY in Simple Words

For someone who is learning SQL, one of the most common places to get stuck is when learning the GROUP BY command. GROUP BY and ORDER BY are two important keywords in SQL that we use to organize data. The difference between GROUP BY and ORDER BY is that ORDER BY is more simple than GROUP BY and is usually introduced early in an SQL course. Sometimes, people are quite confused over these two concepts (SQL ORDER BY vs.

How to Order by Count in SQL?

Problem: You aggregated data into groups, but you want to sort the records in descending order by the number of elements in the groups. Example: Our database has a table named user with data in the following columns: id, first_name, last_name, and country. idfirst_namelast_namecountry 1LisaWilliamsEngland 2GaryAndersPoland 3TomWilliamsPoland 4MichaelBrownFrance 5SusanSmithUSA 6AnneJonesUSA 7EllieMillerPoland Let’s create a report on our users.

How to Order By Two Columns in SQL?

Problem: Want to sort your SQL query results by two columns? The ORDER BY clause lets you control sorting order, ensuring data is displayed exactly as needed. This guide explains how to use ORDER BY effectively, with real-world examples. Example: Our database has a table named employee with the following columns: id, first_name, last_name, and salary. idfirst_namelast_namesalary 1LisaUlman3000 2AdaMuller2400 3ThomasGreen2400 4MichaelMuller3000 5MaryGreen2400 Let’s display all information for each employee but sort the records according to salary in descending order first and then by last name in ascending order.

How to Order Alphabetically in SQL

Problem You want to display records from a table in alphabetical order according to given column. Example Our database has a table named customer. The customer table contains data in the id, first_name, and last_name columns. We want to display customer’s information, sorted in ascending order by their last name. id first_name last_name 1 Susan Thomas 2 John Michael 3 Tom Muller Solution SELECT id, first_name, last_name, FROM customer ORDER BY last_name ASC; This query returns sorted alphabetically records:

Dorota Wdzięczna

How to Sort Records with the ORDER BY Clause

Relational databases don't store records in alphabetical, numerical, ascending, or in any particular order. The only way to order records in the result set is to use the ORDER BY clause. You can use this clause to order rows by a column, a list of columns, or an expression. You can also order rows using the CASE expression. In this post, we'll take a look at the ORDER BY clause – how to write it, how it works, and what it does.

Patrycja Dybka

Oracle Collations: Binary and Linguistic Collations

Oracle bases its language support on the values of parameters that begin with NLS. These parameters specify, for example, how to display currency or how the name of a day is spelled. The table below presents some of the NLS parameters. By using one of them, NLS_SORT, we can specify the sort method (binary or linguistic) for both SQL WHERE clause operations and NLSSORT function operations. Option Name Description NLS_LANG The current language, territory, and database character set, which are determined by session-wide globalization parameters.

Patrycja Dybka

PostgreSQL Collations

List Collations Collations in PostgreSQL are available depending on operating system support. For example, in Ubuntu type the following to list the names of the available collations: locale -a The same locales are available in PostgreSQL in the pg_collation catalog (mappings from an SQL name to operating system locale categories). select * from pg_collation; collname | collnamespace | collowner | collencoding | collcollate | collctype -----------+---------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+------------ default | 11 | 10 | -1 | | C | 11 | 10 | -1 | C | C POSIX | 11 | 10 | -1 | POSIX | POSIX C.

Agnieszka Kozubek-Krycuń

MySQL Collations

List Collations To list all collations available in MySQL, use SHOW COLLATION; +-------------------+----------+-----+---------+----------+---------+ | Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen | +-------------------+----------+-----+---------+----------+---------+ | big5_chinese_ci | big5 | 1 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | big5_bin | big5 | 84 | | Yes | 1 | | dec8_swedish_ci | dec8 | 3 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | dec8_bin | dec8 | 69 | | Yes | 1 | | cp850_general_ci | cp850 | 4 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | cp850_bin | cp850 | 80 | | Yes | 1 | | hp8_english_ci | hp8 | 6 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | hp8_bin | hp8 | 72 | | Yes | 1 | | koi8r_general_ci | koi8r | 7 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | koi8r_bin | koi8r | 74 | | Yes | 1 | | latin1_german1_ci | latin1 | 5 | | Yes | 1 | | latin1_swedish_ci | latin1 | 8 | Yes | Yes | 1 | | latin1_danish_ci | latin1 | 15 | | Yes | 1 | | latin1_german2_ci | latin1 | 31 | | Yes | 2 | | latin1_bin | latin1 | 47 | | Yes | 1 | | latin1_general_ci | latin1 | 48 | | Yes | 1 | .

Agnieszka Kozubek-Krycuń

How Does a Database Sort Strings?

Different languages have different alphabets and different ways to order letters within those alphabets. For example, a Polish character Ł comes right after L and before M. In Swedish, a letter Å comes almost at the end, right after Z. In French diacritics marks have no impact on the alphabetical order, so the letters À, Á and  are treated as the letter A when sorting strings. A collation is a set of rules that defines how to compare and sort character strings.