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Practice

ORDER BY and LIMIT

When working with data, you might want to sort your results or limit how many rows appear. SQL provides two simple tools for this — ORDER BY and LIMIT.


ORDER BY​

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort query results by one or more columns, in ascending or descending order.

Sort books by checkout date
SELECT title, checkout_date
FROM book_checkouts
ORDER BY checkout_date DESC;
  • ASC — ascending order (default): earliest to latest
  • DESC — descending order: newest to oldest

LIMIT​

The LIMIT clause controls how many rows are returned in your results.

Limit results to the 3 most recent checkouts
SELECT title, checkout_date
FROM book_checkouts
ORDER BY checkout_date DESC
LIMIT 3;

This query displays only the three most recent checkouts.


Combining ORDER BY and LIMIT​

These two clauses are often combined to answer real questions like:

  • Who borrowed the most books?
  • What were the last 5 books checked out?
  • Show the top 2 most borrowed books.

When do I use ORDER BY and LIMIT?​

You can use ORDER BY and LIMIT to:

  • View only the top N results
  • Sort data for reports or dashboards
  • Power features like search ranking or pagination

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