Lesson 5. Sorting Retrieved Data

This lesson shows you how to use the SELECT statement’s ORDER BY clause to sort retrieved data as needed.

Sorting Data

As you learned in the last lesson, the following SQL statement returns a single column from a database table. But look at the output. The data appears to be displayed in no particular order at all:

Input

SELECT prod_nameFROM products;

Output

+----------------+| prod_name      |+----------------+| .5 ton anvil   || 1 ton anvil    || 2 ton anvil    || Oil can        || Fuses          || Sling          || TNT (1 stick)  || TNT (5 sticks) || Bird seed      || Carrots        || Safe           || Detonator      || JetPack 1000   || JetPack 2000   |+----------------+

Actually, the retrieved data ...

Get Oracle PL/SQL in 10 Minutes, Sams Teach Yourself now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.