SQL Select - Logical Order

Transact-SQL (T-SQL) is Microsoft's and Sybase's proprietary extension to the SQL (Structured Query Language) used to interact with relational databases.

Here is the logical order in which the various clauses of an SQL (T-SQL in particular) statement are executed/processed by the SQL (T-SQL) engine.

1) FROM

2) WHERE

3) GROUP BY

4) HAVING

5) SELECT

•     expressions / window functions
•     DISTINCT

6) ORDER BY

•     TOP / OFFSET-FETCH

For more details, see this great book on SQL and T-SQL

T-SQL Fundamentals (see chapter 2 in particular).