EasySQL challenge #68ORDER BY

Employees by Hire Date

Sort employees by hire_date ascending.

The challenge runs on the SQLabHub practice database (SQLite) and uses the employees table. You can solve it in the browser, with nothing to install.

Solve This SQL Challenge

The task

Sort employees by hire_date ascending.

A correct answer returns 120 rows with 12 columns: id, first_name, last_name, email, department, department_id, title, salary, hire_date, manager_id, city, status.

Tables used in this challenge

`employees` 120 rows

id INTEGER (PK) · first_name TEXT · last_name TEXT · email TEXT · department TEXT · department_id INTEGER · title TEXT · salary REAL · hire_date TEXT · manager_id INTEGER · city TEXT · status TEXT

First 3 rows of the employees table
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
1	William	Lewis	wlewis18@corp.io	Customer Success	7	Senior CS Manager	61774	2022-07-24	NULL	San Diego	active
2	John	Miller	jmiller51@corp.io	Legal	8	Paralegal	191694	2021-08-09	NULL	San Diego	active
3	Daniel	Rivera	drivera50@corp.io	Engineering	1	VP Engineering	135067	2016-06-06	NULL	Houston	active

The first rows of each table are shown. See how all the tables relate on the database schema page.

Expected output

Expected output of the challenge
id	first_name	last_name	email	department	department_id	title	salary	hire_date	manager_id	city	status
48	Steven	Nguyen	snguyen35@corp.io	Marketing	2	Content Lead	204449	2015-01-14	5	Phoenix	active
118	Michael	Young	myoung35@corp.io	Product	9	CPO	166288	2015-02-16	3	Los Angeles	active
70	Sarah	Ramirez	sramirez48@corp.io	Customer Success	7	Senior CS Manager	152154	2015-02-26	2	Columbus	active
111	John	Lee	jlee7@corp.io	Operations	6	Operations Analyst	203467	2015-03-19	9	Seattle	active
33	Maria	Hill	mhill76@corp.io	Legal	8	Paralegal	81345	2015-04-24	7	New York	active

First 5 of 120 rows. This is the output of the model solution on the practice database.

What you practise

Returning every column of a table with SELECT *
Sorting the result with ORDER BY

Hint and approach

Try the challenge first. Open these only when you need them.

Show the hint

ORDER BY hire_date

Show the step-by-step approach

How the model solution is built, in the order the database evaluates it:

Read from the employees table.
Return every column with SELECT *.
Sort the result by hire_date.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

ORDER BY. Without ORDER BY the row order is not guaranteed, even if it looks stable. Rows that tie on the sort columns can come back in any order.
SELECT *. SELECT * is fine for exploring, but its output changes whenever a column is added to the table. Queries that feed a report should name their columns.