Search code examples
oracle-databasesql-order-byunionora-00933

Oracle: Order by Union returning ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended


I have an issue with using Oracle's union and order by clauses together.

I have two complex queries (with sub queries in them) having an order by clause for each of them. I need to union the output of both and return the result. When I run it, I am getting the error ORA-00933: SQL command not properly ended.

But it works when I comment out the order by clauses in both of them.

To test this, I created a simple query as simple as shown below

select * from employee where employee_id=2 order by name
union
select * from employee where employee_id=3 order by name;

Even this gave the same error when ran with order by clauses but runs well when I commentout the order by clauses.

I tried searching forums, but I could not get solution for the exact problem. I found one at ORACLE Query with ORDER BY and UNION but As my queries are already too complecated because of subqueries and joins between too many tables, I dont want to implement this.

Can someone help me on fixing the root cause of the issue.


Solution

  • try this code:

    select  e1.name name /* e1.* */
      from employee e1
     where employee_id = 2
    union
    select 
      e2.name name /* e2.* */
      from employee e2
     where employee_id = 3
     order by name;
    

    if you want to order the result of first query then to order the result the second query so you can do like this:

    select 1 query, e1.name name /* e1.* */
      from employee e1
     where employee_id = 2
    union
    select 
     2 query, e2.name name /* e2.* */
      from employee e2
     where employee_id = 3
     order by query, name;