Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Second Edition

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;

prod_id    prod_price    prod_name
-------    ----------    --------------------
BNBG02     3.4900        Bird bean bag toy
BNBG01     3.4900        Fish bean bag toy
BNBG03     3.4900        Rabbit bean bag toy
RGAN01     4.9900        Raggedy Ann
BR01       5.9900        8 inch teddy bear
BR02       8.9900        12 inch teddy bear
RYL01      9.4900        King doll
RYL02      9.4900        Queen doll
BR03       11.9900       18 inch teddy bear

As you can see, the output ...