Java™ Oracle® Database Development

Putting Data in Order

One of the most basic yet essential operations we can perform on data is to put it in order. Imagine how useless a phone book would be if the names appeared in random order. One of the most valuable features of a relational database is the flexibility it allows us in sorting our data.

To sort the data returned from a SELECT statement, we add an ORDER BY clause at the end of the other options we've seen so far. This is the basic format:

SELECT select_list
FROM table_list
[WHERE condition]
[GROUP BY clause]
ORDER BY order_list
				

The order_list is similar to the select list: It is a list of column names or expressions containing column names that are used in decreasing order of priority in determining the sort order.

For example, ...