Ordering Query Results

Sybase IQ does not return the rows in a result set in any particular order. Adding an ORDER BY clause to a SELECT statement returns the results in alphabetical or numerical order.

Listing Employees in Alphabetical Order

Adding an ORDER BY clause to a SELECT statement returns the result set in alphabetical or numeric order. The order of the clauses is important. The ORDER BY clause must follow the FROM clause and the SELECT clause. For example:

SELECT * FROM Employees ORDER BY Surname

EmployeeID	ManagerID	Surname	GivenName	DepartmentID	...
1,751	1,576	Ahmed	Alex	400	...
1,013	703	Barker	Joseph	500	...
591	1,576	Barletta	Irene	400	...
191	703	Bertrand	Jeannette	500	...
1,336	1,293	Bigelow	Janet	300	...
1,062	1,576	Blaikie	Barbara	400	...
750	703	Braun	Jane	500	...
160	501	Breault	Robert	100	...
1,191	1,576	Bucceri	Matthew	400	...

Note: If you omit the FROM clause, or if all tables in the query are in the SYSTEM dbspace, the query is processed by SQL Anywhere instead of Sybase IQ and may behave differently, especially with respect to syntactic and semantic restrictions and the effects of option settings. See the SQL Anywhere documentation for rules that may apply to processing.

If you have a query that does not require a FROM clause, you can force the query to be processed by Sybase IQ by adding the clause FROM iq_dummy, where iq_dummy is a one-row, one-column table that you create in your database.