ORDER BY: sort the data in ascending or descending order.
Consider the CUSTOMERS table:
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
Following is an example, which would sort the result in ascending order by NAME:
SQL> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS
ORDER BY NAME;
This would produce the following result:
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 4 | Chaitali | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Khilan | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
GROUP BY: arrange identical data into groups.
Now, CUSTOMERS table has the following records with duplicate names:
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 1 | Ramesh | 32 | Ahmedabad | 2000.00 |
| 2 | Ramesh | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
| 3 | kaushik | 23 | Kota | 2000.00 |
| 4 | kaushik | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
if you want to group identical names into single name, then GROUP BY query would be as follows:
SQL> SELECT * FROM CUSTOMERS
GROUP BY NAME;
This would produce the following result: (for identical names it would pick the last one and finally sort the column in ascending order)
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| ID | NAME | AGE | ADDRESS | SALARY |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
| 5 | Hardik | 27 | Bhopal | 8500.00 |
| 4 | kaushik | 25 | Mumbai | 6500.00 |
| 6 | Komal | 22 | MP | 4500.00 |
| 7 | Muffy | 24 | Indore | 10000.00 |
| 2 | Ramesh | 25 | Delhi | 1500.00 |
+----+----------+-----+-----------+----------+
as you have inferred that it is of no use without SQL functions like sum,avg etc..
so go through this definition to understand the proper use of GROUP BY:
A GROUP BY clause works on the rows returned by a query by summarizing identical rows into a single/distinct group and returns a single row with the summary for each group, by using appropriate Aggregate function in the SELECT list, like COUNT(), SUM(), MIN(), MAX(), AVG(), etc.
Now, if you want to know the total amount of salary on each customer(name), then GROUP BY query would be as follows:
SQL> SELECT NAME, SUM(SALARY) FROM CUSTOMERS
GROUP BY NAME;
This would produce the following result: (sum of the salaries of identical names and sort the NAME column after removing identical names)
+---------+-------------+
| NAME | SUM(SALARY) |
+---------+-------------+
| Hardik | 8500.00 |
| kaushik | 8500.00 |
| Komal | 4500.00 |
| Muffy | 10000.00 |
| Ramesh | 3500.00 |
+---------+-------------+