EasySQL challenge #11ORDER BY

Sort Employees by Salary, Highest First

List every employee ordered from the highest salary to the lowest.

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.

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The task

List employees sorted by salary descending.

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
100	Nancy	Thompson	nthompson43@corp.io	Customer Success	7	Senior CS Manager	203999	2023-01-23	10	New York	active
111	John	Lee	jlee7@corp.io	Operations	6	Operations Analyst	203467	2015-03-19	9	Seattle	active
106	Donna	Johnson	djohnson40@corp.io	Engineering	1	VP Engineering	199029	2018-06-21	2	Jacksonville	active
26	Matthew	Wilson	mwilson27@corp.io	Marketing	2	CMO	196530	2015-10-03	3	Columbus	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

Use ORDER BY DESC

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 salary descending.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

ORDER BY sorts ascending unless you write DESC. With several sort columns, DESC applies only to the column it follows.

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.

Solve This SQL Challenge

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Sort Employees by Department, Then by SalaryHarderMedium
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Find the Top 5 Most Expensive ProductsSimilar levelEasy

Same technique, other tables

More practice on this pattern with different columns:

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Lesson: ORDER BY
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