Sorts on the Server vs. in the Report

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You can either sort the results on the RDBMS server or in the document via the Slice and Dice Panel. As a general rule, I recommend sorting in the local report. Sorting on the server may take additional time to execute a query on what is already a potentially highly utilized database. The desktop, on the other hand, is typically underutilized with spare processing power.

The exception to this is if you also use the Query Options to limit the result set, and the sort order is important. For example, let’s say you want to retrieve a list of newest 100 customers. You can do this via a subquery, or you can do this by including a descending sort on Customer Creation Date and limiting the result set to 100 customers. Likewise, ranking is a SQL analytic functional available in only some databases. If you want to get a list of the top ten selling products or top ten customers with the highest revenues, insert a descending sort on Revenue, and set the Query Options, Partial Results to 10.

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