SAS: How to Use ORDER BY in PROC SQL

You can use the ORDER BY statement in PROC SQL in SAS to order the results of a query by the values of one or more variables.

Here are three common ways to use the ORDER BY statement in practice:

Method 1: Order By One Variable Ascending

/*display results in ascending order by value in team column*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team;
quit;

Method 2: Order By One Variable Descending

/*display results in descending order by value in team column*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team desc;
quit;

Method 3: Order By Multiple Variables

/*display results in ascending order by team, then descending order by points*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team, points desc;
quit;

The following examples show how to use each method in practice with the following dataset in SAS that contains information about various basketball players:

/*create dataset*/
data my_data;
    input team $ position $ points assists;
    datalines;
A Guard 14 4
B Guard 22 6
B Guard 24 9
A Forward 13 8
C Forward 13 9
A Guard 10 5
B Guard 24 4
C Guard 22 6
D Forward 34 2
D Forward 15 5
B Forward 23 5
B Guard 10 4
;
run;

/*view dataset*/
proc print data=my_data;

Example 1: Order By One Variable Ascending

The following code shows how to return every row in the dataset in ascending order by the values in the team column:

/*display results in ascending order by value in team column*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team;
quit;

Notice that the results are shown in ascending order by the values in the team column.

Example 2: Order By One Variable Descending

The following code shows how to return every row in the dataset in descending order by the values in the team column:

/*display results in descending order by value in team column*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team desc;
quit;

Notice that the results are shown in descending order by the values in the team column.

Example 3: Order By Multiple Variables

The following code shows how to return every row in the dataset first in ascending order by team, then in descending order by points:

/*display results in ascending order by team, then descending order by points*/
proc sql;
   select *
   from my_data
   order by team, points desc;
quit;