Basic Queries

Sorting

The graduate students that work at the Portal site are hanging out late one evening drinking… soda pop… and they decide it would be an epically awesome idea to put together a list of the 100 largest rodents ever sampled at the site. Since you’re the resident “computer genius” they text you, and since you’re up late working and this sounds like a lot more fun than the homework you’re working on (which isn’t really saying much, if you know what I’m saying) you decide you’ll make the list for them.

The rules that the Portal students have come up with (and they did spend a sort of disturbingly long time coming up with these rules; I guess you just had to be there) are:

1. Data needed include the species ID, year of capture, and the mass. These columns should be presented in this order.
2. Individuals should be sorted in descending order with respect to mass.
3. In the event of ties (individuals with the same mass) individuals should be sorted first by hind foot length (descending) and then by the year of capture (ascending).

Start by writing a query that returns the relevant fields sorted in the appropriate manner. Then, to limit the number of value to the top 100:

1. Open the query in Design View
2. Open the Property Sheet
3. Set Top Values to 100

Save the final query as 100 Largest Individuals.