Sort Rows With ORDER BY

Control the order of result rows explicitly instead of relying on storage order.

5/5 supported engines validation-green 1 example 2 scenarios

Docker-validated Not currently validation-green

Example 1

Sort rows from highest score to lowest

Without ORDER BY, a database can return rows in any convenient internal order.

Source table data Rows loaded before the example query runs.

Setup

CREATE TABLE scores (player VARCHAR(50), points INT);

INSERT INTO
  scores (player, points)
VALUES
  ('Ada', 42),
  ('Linus', 89),
  ('Grace', 65);

Validated query Shared across supported engines.

SQL

SELECT
  player,
  points
FROM
  scores
ORDER BY
  points DESC,
  player ASC;

Expected result Returned rows for the shared example.

player	points
Linus	89
Grace	65
Ada	42

The result is only trustworthy because the query sets the row order explicitly.

Useful when

Where this command helps.

showing the highest or lowest values first
making result sets deterministic for docs, tests, or exports

Explanation

What the command is doing.

ORDER BY makes the output predictable and readable. In documentation and validation fixtures, explicit ordering keeps expected rows stable across engines.

Sort Rows With ORDER BY

Sort rows from highest score to lowest

Where this command helps.

What the command is doing.

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