Configuring Siebel Business Applications > About Business Components, Fields, Joins, and Links > About Business Components >

How a Business Component Sorts Records

A sort specification is a property of a business component that imposes a sort order on the records that Siebel CRM returns to an applet that references this business component. For example, the Sort Specification property of the predefined Account business component includes the following value:

Name(ASCENDING), Location

This value configures Siebel CRM to do the following:

• Sort account records according to the account name in ascending order.
• If the name is the same for multiple accounts, then it sorts the records that contain the same name according to the Account Location.

A sort specification includes the following qualities:

• If the Sort Specification property is empty, then Siebel CRM returns the records in the order that they occur in the table.
• If a predefined query exists, then it might override a sort specification that is defined on a business component.
• If Siebel CRM runs a sort on one of the following fields, then a sort specification can result in a negative effect on performance:
  • A field that references a join
  • A field that references a new extension column that is not indexed

    For more information, see Siebel Performance Tuning Guide.

• Siebel CRM displays empty records at the beginning of the result set.
• Siebel CRM cannot sort a calculated field.
• You can sort values in a static list or a pick applet differently than how the default sort for the underlying business component does the sort. For more information, see Creating a Sort Specification for a Static List.

For more information, see the following topics:

• Determining How a Business Component Sorts Records
• Guidelines for Configuring How a Business Component Sorts Records
• Configuring the Sort Order for Siebel CRM

How Siebel CRM Sorts a Multi-Value Field

If Siebel CRM references a multi-value field in a sort specification, then it does the following sort:

• Sorts on the initial value of the multi-value field. You must use this configuration only if the multi-value group references a primary foreign key.
• Does not sort the records that reside in the underlying multi-value group. To sort these records, you must create a sort specification in the child business component of the multi-value link.

For more information, see About the Multi-Value Field.

How Siebel CRM Sorts a Check Box Field

If a sort specification references a check box field, then Siebel CRM sorts the following values:

• Y
• N
• NULL

If a sort specification references a check box field, and if you define the sort in descending order, then Siebel CRM returns the records in the following order:

• NULL
• Y
• N

How the Visibility Mode Affects a Sort Specification

Siebel CRM forces the sort that the All visibility mode uses to be on the primary key. The sort in Manager mode occurs on a column in the denormalized reporting relationship table. Siebel CRM can still sort records after the initial query. For better performance, you must configure Siebel CRM to sort records after it filters for a small record set.

You can use the All Mode Sort business component user property to force Siebel CRM to use a custom sort specification or to ignore all sort specifications. For more information, see Siebel Developer's Reference.