SQL ORDER BY

Problem: List all customers sorted by country.

SELECT * 
  FROM Customer
 ORDER BY Country

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ORDER BY syntax.

SELECT column-names
  FROM table-name
 WHERE condition
 ORDER BY column-names

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SELECT CompanyName, ContactName, City, Country
  FROM Supplier
 ORDER BY CompanyName

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The default sort order is ascending, that is, low-high or a-z.

SELECT CompanyName, ContactName, City, Country
  FROM Supplier
 ORDER BY CompanyName DESC

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The keyword DESC denotes descending, i.e., reverse order.

SELECT FirstName, LastName, City, Country
  FROM Customer
 ORDER BY Country, City

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SELECT Id, CompanyName, City, Country
  FROM Supplier
 WHERE Country IN ('USA', 'Japan', 'Germany')
 ORDER BY Country ASC, CompanyName DESC

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This shows that you can order by more than one column.
ASC denotes ascending sort order which is the default.

SELECT Id, OrderDate, CustomerId, TotalAmount
  FROM [Order]
 ORDER BY YEAR(OrderDate) ASC, TotalAmount DESC	

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Note: DESC denotes descending sort order.
Also, the table name [Order] is bracketed because it is a keyword in SQL.

The results show the following year breakpoints: 2012 - 2013 and 2013 - 2014. Each year starts with the highest TotalAmounts. Other data types, such as numbers, strings, dates, and bits can also be sorted.

YEAR is a built-in function that returns the year for a given date.

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