Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Second Edition

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