Oracle ORDER BY Clause

In Oracle, ORDER BY Clause is used to sort or re-arrange the records in the result set. The ORDER BY clause is only used with SELECT statement.

Syntax:

SELECT expressions
FROM tables
WHERE conditions
ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC ];

Parameters:

expressions: It specifies columns that you want to retrieve.

tables: It specifies the table name from where you want to retrieve records.

conditions: It specifies the conditions that must be fulfilled for the records to be selected.

ASC: It is an optional parameter that is used to sort records in ascending order.

DESC: It is also an optional parameter that is used to sort records in descending order.

Oracle ORDER BY Example: (without ASC/DESC attribute)

Let's take a table "supplier"

Supplier table:

CREATE TABLE  "SUPPLIER" 
   (	"SUPPLIER_ID" NUMBER, 
	"FIRST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000), 
	"LAST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000)
   )
/

Execute this Query:

SELECT *
FROM supplier
ORDER BY last_name;

Output:

The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in ascending order.

Oracle ORDER BY Example: (sorting in descending order)

If you want to sort your result in descending order, you should use the DESC attribute in your ORDER BY clause:

Execute this Query:

SELECT *
FROM supplier
ORDER BY last_name DESC;

Output

The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in descending order.