ORDER BY clause used to sort the data in result-set. The sorting can be either Ascending or descending order. ORDER BY clause sort data in ascending order by default. The keywords are - DESC is used for Descending order and ASC for Ascending order.

SELECT column1, column2, …, columnN
FROM table-name 
[ WHERE condition ]
[ORDER BY column-names ASC|DESC]; 

• column1, column2, …, columnN – Specifies the name of the column that are used to fetch from table.
• column-names – Specifies the name of the columns that are used to sort data.

Let us consider below table(s) as an example table(s) to frame the SQL query for getting the desired results.

Scenario- Sorting one column data in ascending order.

Requirement – Fetch emp_id, emp_name, salary, dept_id details of employees in department lowest to highest. The query was as follows -

SELECT emp_id, emp_name, salary, dept_id FROM employee_details
ORDER BY dept_id ASC; 

By executing above query, we can get results as shown below –

Scenario- Sorting one column data in descending order.

Requirement – Fetch emp_id, emp_name, salary details of employees in highest salary first. The query was as follows –

SELECT emp_id, emp_name, salary FROM employee_details 
ORDER BY salary DESC; 

By executing above query, we can get results as shown below –

Scenario- Sorting data by default.

Requirement – Fetch emp_id, emp_name, date_of_hire details of employees in ascending order of date_of_hire. The query was as follows –

SELECT emp_id, emp_name, date_of_hire
FROM employee_details ORDER BY date_of_hire;   

By executing above query, we can get emp_id, emp_name, date_of_hire details of employees from employee_details table in date_of_hire ascending order by default. The output was as follows-

Scenario- Sorting data with where clause.

Requirement – Fetching employees in dept_id 1000 and highest salary first. The query was as follows –

SELECT * FROM employee_details WHERE dept_id = 1000 ORDER BY 
salary DESC; 

By executing above query, we can get results as shown below –

Scenario- Sorting one column in ascending order and another one in descending order.

Requirement – Fetching employee details in date of joining from latest to older and employee name ascending. The query was as follows –

 SELECT * FROM employee_details WHERE dept_id = 1000
ORDER BY date_of_hire DESC, emp_name ASC; 

By executing above query, we can get results as shown below –