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SELECT firstname, surname
FROM people
WHERE country = 'Mexico'

The SQL ORDER BY Clause

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort your columns of data by a particular ordering e.g. ascending or descending and even across multiple columns for more advanced sorting.

ORDER BY Syntax

SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
WHERE condition
ORDER BY column order

Example Descending order

The following SQL statement selects the “firstname“ and “surname“ of all the people from the country "Mexico", in the "people" table and then sorts by surname in ascending order (default order by behaviour):

SELECT firstname, surname
FROM people
WHERE country = 'Mexico'
ORDER BY surname

You could also add the keyword ASC but in this case, the default behaviour is ascending order.

Example Ascending order

The following SQL statement selects the “firstname“ and “surname“ of all the people from the country "Mexico", in the "people" table and then sorts by surname in desc order (the default):

SELECT firstname, surname
FROM people
WHERE country = 'Mexico'
ORDER BY surname DESC

Example Ascending order (multiple columns)

The following SQL statement selects the “firstname“ and “surname“ of all the people from the country "Mexico", in the "people" table and then sorts by surname in DESC (descending) order and then firstname in ascending order (the default):

SELECT firstname, surname
FROM people
WHERE country = 'Mexico'
ORDER BY surname DESC, firstname

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