Lesson 3.

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.
select prod_name from Products

Actually, the retrieved data is not displayed in a mere random order. If unsorted, data will
typically be displayed in the order in which it appears in the underlying tables. This could
be the order in which the data was added to the tables initially. However, if data was
subsequently updated or deleted, the order will be affected by how the DBMS reuses
reclaimed storage space. The end result is that you cannot (and should not) rely on the sort
order if you do not explicitly control it. Relational database design theory states that the
sequence of retrieved data cannot be assumed to have significance if Ordering nwas not
explicitly specified.
Clause
SQL statements are made up of clauses, some required and some optional. A
clause usually consists of a keyword and supplied data. An example of this is the
SELECT statement's FROM clause, which you saw in the last lesson.
select prod_name from Products order by prod_name;

show tables;

This statement is identical to the earlier statement, except it also specifies an ORDER BY
clause instructing the DBMS software to sort the data by the prodname column. The results
are as follows:
Caution: Position of ORDER BY Clause
When specifying an ORDER BY clause, be sure that it is the last clause in your
SELECT statement. If it is not the last clause, an error will be generated.
Tip: Sorting by Nonselected Columns
Although more often than not the columns used in an ORDER BY clause will be
ones selected for display, this is actually not required. It is perfectly legal to sort
data by a column that is not retrieved.
Sorting by Multiple Columns
It is often necessary to sort data by more than one column. For example, if you are
displaying an employee list, you might want to display it sorted by last name and first name
(first by last name, and then within each last name sort by first name). This would be useful
if there are multiple employees with the same last name.
To sort by multiple columns, simply specify the column names separated by commas (just
as you do when you are selecting multiple columns).
The following code retrieves three columns and sorts the results by two of them—first by
price and then by name.
select prod_id, prod_price, prod_name
from Products
order by prod_price, prod_name;

It is important to understand that when you are sorting by multiple columns, the sort
sequence is exactly as specified. In other words, using the output in the example above, the
products are sorted by the prodname column only when multiple rows have the same
prodprice value. If all the values in the prodprice column had been unique, no data would have
been sorted by prodname.

Sorting by Column Position

In addition to being able to specify sort order using column names, ORDER BY also
supports ordering specified by relative column position. The best way to understand this is
to look at an example:
select prod_id, prod_price, prod_name from Products order by 2, 3;

As you can see, the output is identical to that of the query above. The difference here is in
the ORDER BY clause. Instead of specifying column names, the relative positions of selected
columns in the SELECT list are specified. ORDER BY 2 means sort by the second column in
the SELECT list, the prodprice column. ORDER BY 2, 3 means sort by prodprice and then by
prodname.
The primary advantage of this technique is that it saves retyping the column names. But
there are some downsides too. First, not explicitly listing column names increases the
likelihood of you mistakenly specifying the wrong column. Second, it is all too easy to
mistakenly reorder data when making changes to the SELECT list (forgetting to make the
corresponding changes to the ORDER BY clause). And finally, obviously you cannot use this
technique when sorting by columns that are not in the SELECT list.
Tip: Sorting by Nonselected Columns
Obviously, this technique cannot be used when sorting by columns that do not
appear in the SELECT list. However, you can mix and match actual column names
and relative column positions in a single statement if needed.
Specifying Sort Direction
Data sorting is not limited to ascending sort orders (from A to Z). Although this is the
default sort order, the ORDER BY clause can also be used to sort in descending order (from
Z to A). To sort by descending order, the keyword DESC must be specified.
The following example sorts the products by price in descending order (most expensive
first):
select prod_id, prod_price, prod_name
from Products
order by prod_price desc, prod_name desc;

prodid prodprice prodname

BR03 11.99 18 inch teddy bear
RYL02 9.49 Queen doll
RYL01 9.49 King doll
BR02 8.99 12 inch teddy bear
BR01 5.99 8 inch teddy bear
RGAN01 4.99 Raggedy Ann
BNBG03 3.49 Rabbit bean bag toy
BNBG01 3.49 Fish bean bag toy
BNBG02 3.49 Bird bean bag toy

The DESC keyword only applies to the column name that directly precedes it. In the
example above, DESC was specified for the prodprice column, but not for the prodname column.
Therefore, the prodprice column is sorted in descending order, but the prodname column
(within each price) is still sorted in standard ascending order.
Caution: Sorting Descending on Multiple Columns
If you want to sort descending on multiple columns, be sure each column has its
own DESC keyword.
It is worth noting that DESC is short for DESCENDING, and both keywords may be used.
The opposite of DESC is ASC (or ASCENDING), which may be specified to sort in ascending
order. In practice, however, ASC is not usually used because ascending order is the default
sequence (and is assumed if neither ASC nor DESC are specified).
Tip: Case-Sensitivity and Sort Orders
When you are sorting textual data, is A the same as a? And does a come before B
or after Z? These are not theoretical questions, and the answers depend on how
the database is set up.
In dictionary sort order, A is treated the same as a, and that is the default behavior
for most Database Management Systems. However, most good DBMSs enable
 database administrators to change this behavior if needed. (If your database
contains lots of foreign language characters, this might become necessary.)
The key here is that, if you do need an alternate sort order, you may not be able to
accomplish this with a simple ORDER BY clause. You may need to contact your
database administrator.

Summary
In this lesson, you learned how to sort retrieved data using the SELECT statement's ORDER
BY clause. This clause, w*hich must be the last in the SELECT statement*, can be used to
sort data on one or more columns as needed.
关键词 order by, 需要放置到最后 individual columm, multiple columns, column postion,
sort direction