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Coordinator DB
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ORDER BY ​

ORDER BY sorts the query result by one or more expressions. The first expression is compared first; later expressions break ties.

Without ORDER BY, result order is unspecified. Use a unique tie breaker when LIMIT or OFFSET must return a repeatable page.

Syntax ​

text
ORDER BY expression [COLLATE collation] [ASC | DESC]
         [NULLS FIRST | NULLS LAST] [, ...]
  • ASC — Ascending order; the default.
  • DESC — Descending order.
  • NULLS FIRST or NULLS LAST — Explicitly places missing values. By default, NULL precedes other values in ascending order.
  • COLLATE — Selects text comparison rules. BINARY uses the ordinary comparison; NOCASE folds ASCII case and RTRIM ignores trailing spaces.

Ordering can use a result alias or a result-column position. An ORDER BY inside OVER defines a window's calculation order and does not replace the outer ordering.

Examples ​

Sorting by total and then name ​

sql
CREATE TABLE accounts (name TEXT, total INTEGER);
INSERT INTO accounts VALUES ('Grace', 100), ('Ada', 100), ('Sam', 80);
sql
SELECT name, total
FROM accounts
ORDER BY total DESC, name ASC
FORMAT csv;
text
"Ada",100
"Grace",100
"Sam",80

Case-insensitive text and NULL placement ​

sql
CREATE TABLE labels (value TEXT);
INSERT INTO labels VALUES ('b'), ('A'), (NULL);
sql
SELECT value
FROM labels
ORDER BY value COLLATE NOCASE NULLS LAST
FORMAT csv;
text
"A"
"b"
\N

See LIMIT for selecting a bounded sorted result.