Question

I want to count sites on some languages for statistics and use this query:

SELECT `language_id` , count( * ) AS 'num'
FROM sites
WHERE `language_id` != 0
GROUP BY `language_id`
ORDER BY 'num' ASC

But result isn’t ordered by num field. What is wrong in my SQL?

Answer 1

The problem is that you are quoting your alias num using the single quote ' character, which happens to be valid in creating the alias but is treated as a literal string in the ORDER BY clause: since it is invariant across the results it does not affect the sort order. The backtick character is valid in both clauses. Try instead:

SELECT `language_id` , count( * ) AS `num`
FROM sites
WHERE `language_id` != 0
GROUP BY `language_id`
ORDER BY `num` ASC