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Practice

ORDER BY and LIMIT

When querying data, you may want to sort the results or limit how many rows are returned. SQL provides 2 powerful tools for this: ORDER BY and LIMIT.


ORDER BY​

The ORDER BY clause is used to sort 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) is the default: earliest to latest
  • DESC (descending) sorts from newest to oldest

LIMIT​

The LIMIT clause is used to restrict how many rows are returned in the result set.

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

This query shows only the 3 most recently checked-out books.


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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