SQL Count function query

Question

Im having a little trouble trying with the count function in SQL.

What I am attempting is to count the amount of people with a certain name

For example:

Name | Number
==============
Ivan | 9      
Brody| 8
Ray  | 7

And where there are the same instance sort alphabetically.

Any help is much appreciated!

John Woo · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-06 00:33:08Z

5

When using COUNT() which is an AGGREGATE FUNCTION it needs to have GROUP BY Clause. Try this,

SELECT Name, COUNT(name)
FROM tableName
GROUP BY Name
ORDER BY COUNT(name) DESC

or you can just add ALIAS on it

SELECT Name, COUNT(name) totalCount
FROM tableName
GROUP BY Name
ORDER BY totalCount DESC

answered Sep 6, 2012 at 0:22

John Woo

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5 Comments

Thats perfect except I need it to be sorted by the largest number of names first :)

@user1650499 do you mean name that has many count? if so, change it to ORDER BY COUNT(NAME) DESC

@user1650499 you can also add alias on it, see the updated answer above :)

@user1650499 don't forget to accept answers if it really helped you a lot :)

+1 for adding s to the end of need ... and also being correct :)