By default, a database does not sort the records returned from a SQL query. In fact, you cannot guarantee that the records returned from the same query are returned in the same order each time you run the query.

However, if you require records in a specific order, you can write your SQL statement to sort the records returned from the database. To do so, you include an ORDER BY clause in the SQL statement.

For example, the following SQL statement returns the records of the table ordered by the LastName column:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY LastName

You can combine multiple fields in the ORDER BY clause to perform additional sorting:

SELECT * FROM employees ORDER BY DepartmentID, LastName

This statement returns row ordered by department, then by last name within the department.