OCR GCSE Computer Science Complete Practice Exam 2025

The ORDER BY clause in an SQL query is specifically designed to determine the sorting of output records based on one or more columns. When this clause is included in a query, it allows you to specify the direction of the sort—either ascending (default) or descending. This means that the results returned from a database will be organized according to the values in the specified columns, which can be particularly useful for reporting and analysis.

For example, if you have a list of employees with a 'salary' column, using the ORDER BY clause to sort by salary can immediately show you who earns the most or the least. Without this clause, the results would return in an unspecified order, which may not be useful for understanding or analyzing the data effectively.

The other options do not correctly describe the function of the ORDER BY clause. Filtering records based on conditions pertains to the WHERE clause, specifying which columns to select relates to the SELECT statement itself, and inserting new records into a table is accomplished using the INSERT statement. Thus, the primary role of the ORDER BY clause is indeed to determine how the output records are sorted.