SQL multiple column ordering

How can I sort by multiple columns in SQL and in different directions. column1 would be sorted descending, and column2 ascending.

2

8 Answers

ORDER BY column1 DESC, column2

This sorts everything by column1 (descending) first, and then by column2 (ascending, which is the default) whenever the column1 fields for two or more rows are equal.

9

The other answers lack a concrete example, so here it goes:

Given the following People table:

 FirstName | LastName | YearOfBirth
---------------------------------------- Thomas | Alva Edison | 1847 Benjamin | Franklin | 1706 Thomas | More | 1478 Thomas | Jefferson | 1826

If you execute the query below:

SELECT * FROM People ORDER BY FirstName DESC, YearOfBirth ASC

The result set will look like this:

 FirstName | LastName | YearOfBirth
---------------------------------------- Thomas | More | 1478 Thomas | Jefferson | 1826 Thomas | Alva Edison | 1847 Benjamin | Franklin | 1706

5

SELECT *
FROM mytable
ORDER BY column1 DESC, column2 ASC

Multiple column ordering depends on both column's corresponding values: Here is my table example where are two columns named with Alphabets and Numbers and the values in these two columns are asc and desc orders.

Now I perform Order By in these two columns by executing below command:

Now again I insert new values in these two columns, where Alphabet value in ASC order:

and the columns in Example table look like this. Now again perform the same operation:

You can see the values in the first column are in desc order but second column is not in ASC order.

1

You can use multiple ordering on multiple condition,

ORDER BY (CASE WHEN @AlphabetBy = 2 THEN [Drug Name] END) ASC, CASE WHEN @TopBy = 1 THEN [Rx Count] WHEN @TopBy = 2 THEN [Cost] WHEN @TopBy = 3 THEN [Revenue] END DESC 

1

SELECT id, first_name, last_name, salary
FROM employee
ORDER BY salary DESC, last_name; 

If you want to select records from a table but would like to see them sorted according to two columns, you can do so with ORDER BY. This clause comes at the end of your SQL query.

After the ORDER BY keyword, add the name of the column by which you’d like to sort records first (in our example, salary). Then, after a comma, add the second column (in our example, last_name). You can modify the sorting order (ascending or descending) separately for each column. If you want to use ascending (low to high) order, you can use the ASC keyword; this keyword is optional, though, as that is the default order when none is specified. If you want to use descending order, put the DESC keyword after the appropriate column (in the example, we used descending order for the salary column).

You can also sort or order by the Number of Characters in each Column you wish to sort by. Shown below is a sample which sorts by the first three characters of the First Name and by the last two characters in the name of the town.

SELECT *
FROM table_name
ORDER BY LEFT(FirstName, 3) ASC, LEFT(Town, 2);

SELECT * FROM EMP ORDER BY DEPTNO ASC, JOB DESC;

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