Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft® SQL Server T-SQL in 10 Minutes

Lesson 5. Sorting Retrieved Data

In this lesson, you will learn 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 anvil1 ton anvil2 ton anvilDetonatorBird seedCarrotsFusesJetPack 1000JetPack 2000