EasySQL challenge #51ORDER BYLIMIT

Get the 5 Most Recent Orders

Return the five orders with the latest order_date.

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

Solve This SQL Challenge

The task

Get 5 most recent orders.

A correct answer returns 5 rows with 10 columns: id, user_id, total, discount, item_count, status, order_date, shipped_date, shipping_city, shipping_country.

Tables used in this challenge

`orders` 200 rows

id INTEGER (PK) · user_id INTEGER · total REAL · discount REAL · item_count INTEGER · status TEXT · order_date TEXT · shipped_date TEXT · shipping_city TEXT · shipping_country TEXT

First 3 rows of the orders table
id	user_id	total	discount	item_count	status	order_date	shipped_date	shipping_city	shipping_country
1	43	2638.11	0.25	3	cancelled	2024-04-24	NULL	Los Angeles	USA
2	8	2947	0.19	5	delivered	2024-03-15	2023-04-09	Chicago	USA
3	136	683.24	0.08	2	delivered	2023-02-15	2023-07-10	Los Angeles	USA

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	user_id	total	discount	item_count	status	order_date	shipped_date	shipping_city	shipping_country
70	149	2104.22	0.17	3	pending	2024-12-24	NULL	Philadelphia	USA
171	38	2162.1	0.04	4	delivered	2024-12-23	2023-02-08	Indianapolis	USA
155	69	110.6	0.11	6	cancelled	2024-12-19	NULL	San Jose	USA
128	30	370.05	0.13	5	refunded	2024-12-13	NULL	New York	USA
169	96	1308.16	0.09	5	delivered	2024-12-12	2023-04-18	Jacksonville	USA

The complete result: 5 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
Returning only the first rows with LIMIT

Hint and approach

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

Show the hint

ORDER BY date DESC

Show the step-by-step approach

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

Read from the orders table.
Return every column with SELECT *.
Sort the result by order_date descending.
Keep only the first 5 rows with LIMIT.

Model solution

Checking your session…

What to watch for

Sort the date descending, then limit. Several orders can share the same date, so which of them lands in fifth place is arbitrary unless you add a tiebreaker such as id DESC.

LIMIT. LIMIT without ORDER BY returns an arbitrary set of rows. LIMIT is also dialect-specific: SQL Server uses TOP and Oracle uses FETCH FIRST.
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.