SQL DESC Keyword

The SQL ORDER BY statement is used to sort the result table in ascending or descending order. By default, ORDER BY keyword sorts the result in ascending order, however it can be specified using ASC keyword. To sort the result in descending order, DESC keyword is used.

Syntax

The syntax for using ORDER BY statement is given below:

SELECT column1, column2, column3, ...
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column1, column2, ... ASC|DESC;

Example:

Consider a database table called Employee with the following records:

• To fetch the Employee table sorted by Age (descending order), the SQL code is:

  SELECT * FROM Employee
  ORDER BY Age DESC;
  

  
  

  This will produce the result as shown below:

  ID	Name	City	Age	Salary
  4	Kim	Amsterdam	30	3100
  5	Ramesh	New Delhi	28	3000
  6	Huang	Beijing	28	2800
  3	Jo	Paris	27	2800
  1	John	London	25	3000
  2	Marry	New York	24	2750

• To fetch all fields of the Employee table sorted by Age (ascending order) and Salary (descending order), the SQL code will be:

  SELECT * FROM Employee
  ORDER BY Age ASC, Salary DESC;
  

  
  

  This result of the following code will be:

  ID	Name	City	Age	Salary
  2	Marry	New York	24	2750
  1	John	London	25	3000
  3	Jo	Paris	27	2800
  5	Ramesh	New Delhi	28	3000
  6	Huang	Beijing	28	2800
  4	Kim	Amsterdam	30	3100