What is the effect of ORDER BY hire_date DESC in a query?

• A. It sorts results by hire_date from newest to oldest
• B. It sorts results by hire_date from oldest to newest
• C. It groups results by hire_date
• D. It filters results by hire_date

Answer: (A)

ORDER BY sorts the result set based on the values in a specified column. Adding DESC means the sort goes in descending order. For a date column like hire_date, descending order puts the most recent dates first, so you see the newest hires at the top and older hires later. It doesn’t group rows (that would be GROUP BY) or filter them (that would be WHERE). So the effect is ordering the results from newest to oldest.