ORDER BY LIMIT is used to get rows from table in sorting order either in ascending or descending order and to limit rows in result-set. ORDER BY LIMIT is not supported in all databases. ORDER BY LIMIT works only in MySQL.

SELECT column_name1, column_name2, …, column_nameN 
FROM table_name
[WHERE conditions]
[ORDER BY column_name  ASC | DESC]
LIMIT number_of_rows [ OFFSET offset_value]; 

• column_name1, column_name2, …, column_nameN – represents the column names.
• number_of_rows – Specifies how many rows displayed from the first row.
• offset_value – Specifies how many rows should skip from the first row.

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

Scenario – Fetch rows in descending order of single column by limiting values.

Requirement – Fetch first two employees whose dept_id is 1000 in descending order of emp_id. The query was as follows –

SELECT * FROM employee_details WHERE dept_id = 1000 ORDER BY
 emp_id DESC LIMIT 2; 

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

Scenario – Fetch rows in descending order by skipping some rows from table.

Requirement – Fetch 3rd employee from employee_details table in descending order of emp_name whose dept_id is 2000. The query was as follows –

SELECT * FROM employee_details WHERE dept_id = 2000
ORDER BY emp_name DESC LIMIT 1 OFFSET 2; 

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

Scenario – Fetch rows in ascending order of single column by limiting values.

Requirement – Fetch first three employees whose dept_id is 1000 in descending order of emp_id. The query was as follows –

SELECT * FROM employee_details WHERE dept_id = 1000 ORDER BY
 emp_id ASC LIMIT 3; 

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