Sorting and Limiting

ORDER BY

The ORDER BY clause sorts query results. Without it, the order of rows is undefined — SQLite may return them in any order.

SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY price;

This returns products sorted by price from lowest to highest (ascending order by default).

ASC and DESC

Use ASC (ascending, default) or DESC (descending) to control sort direction:

-- Cheapest first (ascending, default)
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY price ASC;

-- Most expensive first (descending)
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY price DESC;

Sorting by Multiple Columns

List multiple columns to sort by, separated by commas. The second column is used to break ties in the first:

SELECT name, category, price
FROM products
ORDER BY category ASC, price DESC;

This sorts by category alphabetically, and within each category, by price from highest to lowest.

LIMIT

LIMIT restricts the number of rows returned:

-- Return only the first 3 rows
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY price DESC LIMIT 3;

Always combine LIMIT with ORDER BY in practice — otherwise you get an arbitrary subset of rows, which is rarely useful.

OFFSET

OFFSET skips a number of rows before returning results. Use it with LIMIT for pagination:

-- Page 1: rows 1-3
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY id LIMIT 3 OFFSET 0;

-- Page 2: rows 4-6
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY id LIMIT 3 OFFSET 3;

-- Page 3: rows 7-8
SELECT name, price FROM products ORDER BY id LIMIT 3 OFFSET 6;

SQLite also supports a shorthand: LIMIT offset, count. For example, LIMIT 3, 3 skips 3 rows and returns 3. This is non-standard — prefer the LIMIT ... OFFSET ... form for clarity.

NULL Ordering

By default, NULL values sort last in ascending order and first in descending order. SQLite follows standard behavior here.

Your Task

Select the name and price of the 3 most expensive products, sorted by price descending.