ORDER BY & TOP

What you’ll learn

• Sort results; take first N rows with TOP and WITH TIES.
• Handle NULL ordering.

-- Latest 10 orders, including ties by date
SELECT TOP (10) WITH TIES *
FROM dbo.Orders
ORDER BY OrderDate DESC;

-- NULLS LAST (workaround)
SELECT *
FROM dbo.Products
ORDER BY CASE WHEN Color IS NULL THEN 1 ELSE 0 END, Color;

Notes

• WITH TIES returns extra rows that tie on the ORDER BY keys.
• Use deterministic ORDER BY with secondary columns to break ties.