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How a Business Component Sorts Records

A sort specification is a property of a business component that impose a sort order on the records that Siebel CRM returns to an applet that is associated with this business component. For example, the predefined Account business component includes a sort specification property with the following value: Name(ASCENDING), Location. This value instructs 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 sort 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 in which they occur in the table.
• If a predefined query exists, then it might override a sort specification that is defined on a business component.
• A sort specification can result in a negative effect on performance if Siebel CRM executes a sort on one of the following fields:
  • 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 always displays empty records at the top of the record set if a sort specification is placed on a field that contains empty values.
• You cannot sort on a calculated field.
• You can sort values in a static list or pick applet differently than the default sort for the underlying business component. 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 Determining How a Business Component Sorts Records
• Customizing the Sort Order for Siebel CRM

How Siebel CRM Sorts a Multi-Value Field

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

• Sorts on the initial value of the multi-value field. You must only use this configuration if the multi-value group references a primary foreign key.
• Does not sort the records in the underlying multi-value group. To sort the records of the underlying multi-value group, 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 in the All visibility mode to be on the primary key. The sort in Manager mode occurs on a column in the denormalized reporting relationship table. You can still sort records after the initial query. For better performance, you must sort records after you filter for a small record set.

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