Accessing Databases with JDBC - Java: How to Program Early Objects - page 1055

24.4.3 ORDER BY Clause
The rows in the result of a query can be sorted into ascending or descending order by using
the optional ORDER BY clause . The basic form of a query with an ORDER BY clause is

SELECT columnName1 , columnName2 , … FROM tableName ORDER BY column ASC
SELECT columnName1 , columnName2 , … FROM tableName ORDER BY column DESC

where ASC specifies ascending order (lowest to highest), DESC specifies descending order
(highest to lowest) and column specifies the column on which the sort is based. For exam-
ple, to obtain the list of authors in ascending order by last name (Fig. 24.15), use the query

SELECT AuthorID, FirstName, LastName
FROM Authors
ORDER BY LastName ASC

AuthorID FirstName LastName

1 Paul Deitel

2 Harvey Deitel

3 Abbey Deitel

5 Michael Morgano

4 Dan Quirk

Fig. 24.15 | Sample data from table Authors in ascending order by LastName .

Sorting in Descending Order
The default sorting order is ascending, so ASC is optional. To obtain the same list of au-
thors in descending order by last name (Fig. 24.16), use the query

SELECT AuthorID, FirstName, LastName
FROM Authors
ORDER BY LastName DESC

AuthorID FirstName LastName

4 Dan Quirk

5 Michael Morgano

1 Paul Deitel

2 Harvey Deitel

3 Abbey Deitel

Fig. 24.16 | Sample data from table Authors in descending order by LastName .

Sorting By Multiple Columns
Multiple columns can be used for sorting with an ORDER BY clause of the form

ORDER BY column1 sortingOrder , column2 sortingOrder , …

where sortingOrder is either ASC or DESC . The sortingOrder does not have to be identical for
each column. The query