Order By in SQL | Structured Query Language

In SQL (Structured Query Language), the ORDER BY clause is used to sort the result set of a SELECT statement in ascending or descending order based on one or more columns. The basic syntax of the ORDER BY clause is as follows:

```
SELECT column1, column2, ...
FROM table_name
ORDER BY column1 [ASC|DESC], column2 [ASC|DESC], ...;
```

- `column1, column2, ...` are the names of the columns you want to sort the result set by.
- `table_name` is the name of the table you want to retrieve data from.
- `ASC` (ascending) and `DESC` (descending) are optional keywords that specify the sorting order. The default order is ascending.

For example, if you have a table named "employees" with columns "id", "name", "age", and "salary", and you want to retrieve the records in ascending order of the "salary" column, you can use the following SQL statement:

```
SELECT id, name, age, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY salary ASC;
```

This will sort the result set in ascending order of the "salary" column.

You can also sort the result set by multiple columns by specifying the column names separated by commas. For example, the following SQL statement will sort the result set in ascending order of the "age" column, and then in descending order of the "salary" column:

```
SELECT id, name, age, salary
FROM employees
ORDER BY age ASC, salary DESC;
```

This will sort the result set first by the "age" column in ascending order, and then by the "salary" column in descending order.