Crystal Reports for Rational Application Developer Designer Guide

Understanding sort options

When you sort, the program asks you to define two things: the sort direction (ascending or descending), and the field you want the sort to be based on (sort field).
Sort fields, such as Date, Time, and Currency, let you determine the order in which data appears on your report. Almost any field can be used as a sort field, including formula fields. A field's data type determines how the data from that field is sorted.

Note: You cannot sort on memo or BLOB fields.
Field Type
Sort Order
Single-character string fields
blanks
punctuation
numbers
uppercase letter
lowercase letters
Multiple character string field
two letters
three letters
four letters, and so on
For example:
Currency fields
numeric order
Number fields
numeric order
Date fields
chronological order
DateTime fields
chronological order
same-date values sorted by time
Time fields
chronological order
Boolean comparison fields
False values (0)
True values (1)
Null values
null values
non-null values

Note: If sorting and grouping are performed on the database server, sort order may vary when Unicode or UTF-8 data is used. The order applied depends on the rules in place for your data source. In certain cases, Unicode data is sorted by its binary value, but it can also be sorted according to a particular locale setting. Refer to the documentation for your data source for details on how Unicode data fields are sorted.


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