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Databases

Jan Lundeen
Jan Lundeen
5,881 Points

ORDER BY query is not working - getting error message "Bummer! Your query didn't order the contacts from phone book."

Hi,

On Challenge Task 1 of 3, I'm getting an error on my ORDER BY query. Here's the challenge I'm working on: Imagine you're a developer on a smartphone with an embedded database. There's a phone_book table with the fields, first_name, last_name and phone. Write the SQL query to order first by last_name and then by first_name in alphabetical order. Select all columns.

I wrote the following query:

SELECT last_name, first_name FROM phone_book ORDER BY last_name ASC, first_name ASC;

I received the following error:

Bummer! Your query didn't order the contacts from the phone_book table in the correct order!

It's my understanding that ASC sorts columns alphabetically (from A-Z). I'm not sure why I'm receiving this error.

Thanks,

Jan

1 Answer

Umesh Ravji
Umesh Ravji
42,386 Points

Hi Jan, if you replace your columns with an asterisk, it works fine. It just expected all the columns, not just the two you are ordering on.

SELECT * FROM phone_book ORDER BY last_name ASC, first_name ASC;
Jan Lundeen
Jan Lundeen
5,881 Points

Thanks Umesh! That worked.

Jan