Descending order
is the opposite of ascending order, from lowercase z to
uppercase A for character types, and from highest
to lowest for numeric data types. DATE and DATETIME data is sorted
from latest to earliest, and INTERVAL data is ordered from longest
to shortest span of time. The following query shows an example of
descending order. Figure 1: Query
SELECT * FROM manufact ORDER BY lead_time DESC;
The keyword DESC following a column name causes the retrieved
data to be sorted in descending order, as the result shows. Figure 2: Query result
manu_code manu_name lead_time
SHM Shimara 30
KAR Karsten 21
PRC ProCycle 9
NKL Nikolus 8
NRG Norge 7
HSK Husky 5
ANZ Anza 5
HRO Hero 4
SMT Smith 3
You can specify any column of a built-in data type (except
TEXT, BYTE, BLOB, or CLOB) in the ORDER BY clause, and the database
server sorts the data based on the values in that column.