What is the difference between GROUP BY and ORDER BY in…

1 year ago
Sophia Anderson
2 minutes

In SQL, both GROUP BY and ORDER BY are used to sort the query results, but they have different purposes and methods of use.

  1. The GROUP BY clause is used to group the query results based on the values of one or more columns. It will group rows with the same value into the same group, and perform aggregation calculations on each group. GROUP BY is usually used together with aggregate functions (such as COUNT, SUM, AVG, etc.) to apply these functions to each group and return the aggregate results of each group. GROUP BY can be used to calculate the total count, average, maximum/minimum value, etc. of each group. Within the GROUP BY clause, one or more columns can be specified as the grouping criteria.

For example, the following query groups employees by department and calculates the average salary for each department:

SELECT department, AVG(salary)
FROM employees
GROUP BY department;
  1. The ORDER BY clause is used to sort the query results by one or more columns. It can sort the results in ascending (ASC) or descending (DESC) order, with ascending being the default. ORDER BY is typically used at the end of a query to sort the results by a specified column.

For example, the following query will sort employees by salary in descending order:

SELECT * FROM employees
ORDER BY salary DESC;

In summary:

  1. GROUP BY is used to group the query results based on the values of the specified column and perform aggregate calculations.
  2. ORDER BY is used to sort the query results based on the values of a specified column.
bannerAds