SQL · Quick Reference

Lesson 6 — Sorting & Limiting Results Cheat Sheet

SQL

Key Ideas

1ORDER BY. SQL -- Ascending (A to Z, 0 to 9) — default SELECT name, age FROM students ORDER BY age; SELECT name, grade FROM students ORDER BY grade ASC ; -- Descending (Z to A, 9...

2LIMIT and OFFSET. SQL -- Top 5 students by grade SELECT name, grade FROM students ORDER BY grade ASC LIMIT 5 ; -- Skip first 10, get next 10 (page 2 of a paginated list) SELECT * FROM s...

3Real-World Patterns. SQL -- Leaderboard: top 10 scores SELECT player_name, score FROM game_scores ORDER BY score DESC LIMIT 10 ; -- Latest 5 orders SELECT order_id, customer_name, total FR...

4NULL Handling in ORDER BY. SQL -- NULLs sort FIRST in ASC, LAST in DESC (MySQL default) SELECT name, email FROM students ORDER BY email ASC ; -- Students with no email appear first -- Force NULL...

Code Examples

-- Ascending (A to Z, 0 to 9) — default
SELECT name, age FROM students ORDER BY age;
SELECT name, grade FROM students ORDER BY grade ASC;

-- Descending (Z to A, 9 to 0)
SELECT name, age FROM students ORDER BY age DESC;

-- Multiple sort columns (pri...

-- Top 5 students by grade
SELECT name, grade FROM students ORDER BY grade ASC LIMIT 5;

-- Skip first 10, get next 10 (page 2 of a paginated list)
SELECT * FROM students ORDER BY id LIMIT 10 OFFSET 10;

-- Equivalent shorthand: LIMIT offset, count
S...

-- Leaderboard: top 10 scores
SELECT player_name, score
FROM game_scores
ORDER BY score DESC
LIMIT 10;

-- Latest 5 orders
SELECT order_id, customer_name, total
FROM orders
ORDER BY order_date DESC
LIMIT 5;

-- Pagination for a web app (page N, ...