I wants to write a query such that the first 4 rows should be sorted in ASC order & the remainig rows should be sorted in DESC order.

I written this query to sort the first 4 rows,

SQL> select id from (select id from (select id,rownum v from emp)v1 where v1.v b
etween 1 and 4 order by id asc);

ID
----------
9
10
11
12


I written this query to sort the remaining rows,

SQL> select id from (select id from (select id,rownum v from emp)v1 where v1.v b
etween 5 and 7 order by id desc);

ID
----------
15
14
13

Then i combined the result of these queries using UNION to get my required result,i.e., the output should like this,

ID
----------
9
10
11
12
15
14
13

But i got the output as follows,

SQL> select id from (select id from (select id,rownum v from emp)v1 where v1.v b
etween 1 and 4 order by id asc)
2 union
3 select id from (select id from (select id,rownum v from emp)v1 where v1.v b
etween 5 and 7 order by id desc)
4 /

ID
----------
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

7 rows selected.

Eventhough the UNION works for simple query as follows,

SQL> select id from emp1;

ID
----------
10
15

SQL> select id from emp2 order by id desc;

ID
----------
7
5

SQL> select id from emp1
2 union
3 select id from emp2 order by id desc;

ID
----------
15
10
7
5

Why it's not working,can anyone tell me what is the error in this & what i've to do get the output like,

ID
----------
9
10
11
12
15
14
13

Thanks,
Malru