In Oracle, ORDER BY Clause is used to sort or re-arrange the records in the result set. The ORDER BY clause is only used with SELECT statement.

Syntax:

SELECT expressions  
FROM tables  
WHERE conditions  
ORDER BY expression [ ASC | DESC ];   

Parameters:

expressions: It specifies columns that you want to retrieve.

tables: It specifies the table name from where you want to retrieve records.

conditions: It specifies the conditions that must be fulfilled for the records to be selected.

ASC: It is an optional parameter that is used to sort records in ascending order.

DESC: It is also an optional parameter that is used to sort records in descending order.

Oracle ORDER BY Example: (without ASC/DESC attribute)

Let's take a table "supplier"

Supplier table:

CREATE TABLE  "SUPPLIER"   
   (    "SUPPLIER_ID" NUMBER,   
    "FIRST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000),   
    "LAST_NAME" VARCHAR2(4000)  
   )  
/  

Execute this Query:

SELECT *  
FROM supplier  
ORDER BY last_name;  

Output:

The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in ascending order.

Oracle ORDER BY Example: (sorting in descending order)

If you want to sort your result in descending order, you should use the DESC attribute in your ORDER BY clause:

Execute this Query:

SELECT *  
FROM supplier  
ORDER BY last_name DESC;  

Output

The above example returns the first_name ordered by last_name in descending order.