What is the purpose of Order By 1 in SQL select statement?

Question

I\'m reading through some old code at work, and have noticed that there are several views with an order by 1 clause. What does this accomplish?

Exampl

Answer 1

This:

ORDER BY 1

...is known as an "Ordinal" - the number stands for the column based on the number of columns defined in the SELECT clause. In the query you provided, it means:

ORDER BY A.PAYMENT_DATE

It's not a recommended practice, because:

1. It's not obvious/explicit
2. If the column order changes, the query is still valid so you risk ordering by something you didn't intend

Answer 2

This will sort your results by the first column returned. In the example it will sort by payment_date.