What is ORDER BY operator in SQL?
Andrew Mckinney
Updated on June 04, 2026
Order by operators allow you to change the order of rows in a data set according to the values in one or more designated columns. Order by operators provide the same function as an ORDER BY clause in an SQL statement. For each column that you sort by, you can specify ascending or descending order.
What is ORDER BY clause in MySQL?
The MySQL ORDER BY clause is used to sort the query result sets in either ascending or descending order. “[ASC | DESC]” is the keyword used to sort result sets in either ascending or descending order. Note ASC is used as the default.
How does ORDER BY work in SQL?
The ORDER BY statement in SQL is used to sort the fetched data in either ascending or descending according to one or more columns.
- By default ORDER BY sorts the data in ascending order.
- We can use the keyword DESC to sort the data in descending order and the keyword ASC to sort in ascending order.
Why do we use ORDER BY function in MySQL?
The ORDER BY Clause can be used along with the SELECT statement to sort the data of specific fields in an ordered way. It is used to sort the result-set in ascending or descending order.
Where do we use ORDER BY clause in MySQL?
The MYSQL ORDER BY Clause is used to sort the records in ascending or descending order. Syntax: SELECT expressions. FROM tables.
How do I sort by alphabetical order in MySQL?
Summary. Use the ORDER BY clause to sort the result set by one or more columns. Use the ASC option to sort the result set in ascending order and the DESC option to sort the result set in descending order. The ORDER BY clause is evaluated after the FROM and SELECT clauses.
Which statement selects all orders sorted down?
Order by clause is used with SELECT statement for arranging retrieved data in sorted order. The Order by clause by default sorts the retrieved data in ascending order. To sort the data in descending order DESC keyword is used with Order by clause.
