When you use sorted ports, the Integration Service adds the ports to the ORDER BY clause in the default query. The Integration Service adds the configured number of ports, starting at the top of the Source Qualifier transformation. If a subset of ports is connected downstream, the default query only includes the subset of ports. The sorted ports are applied on the connected ports rather than the ports that start at the top of the Source Qualifier transformation.
You might use sorted ports to improve performance when you include any of the following transformations in a mapping:
Aggregator.
When you configure an Aggregator transformation for sorted input, you can send sorted data by using sorted ports. The group by ports in the Aggregator transformation must match the order of the sorted ports in the Source Qualifier transformation.
Joiner.
When you configure a Joiner transformation for sorted input, you can send sorted data by using sorted ports. Configure the order of the sorted ports the same in each Source Qualifier transformation.
You can also use the Sorter transformation to sort relational and flat file data before Aggregator and Joiner transformations.
Use sorted ports for relational sources only. When using sorted ports, the sort order of the source database must match the sort order configured for the session. The Integration Service creates the SQL query used to extract source data, including the ORDER BY clause for sorted ports. The database server performs the query and passes the resulting data to the Integration Service. To ensure data is sorted as the Integration Service requires, the database sort order must be the same as the user-defined session sort order.
When you configure the Integration Service for data code page validation and run a workflow in Unicode data movement mode, the Integration Service uses the selected sort order to sort character data.
When you configure the Integration Service for relaxed data code page validation, the Integration Service uses the selected sort order to sort all character data that falls in the language range of the selected sort order. The Integration Service sorts all character data outside the language range of the selected sort order according to standard Unicode sort ordering.
When the Integration Service runs in ASCII mode, it ignores this setting and sorts all character data using a binary sort order. The default sort order depends on the code page of the Integration Service.
The Source Qualifier transformation includes the number of sorted ports in the default SQL query. However, if you modify the default query after choosing the Number of Sorted Ports, the Integration Service uses only the query defined in the SQL Query property.
To use sorted ports:
In the Mapping Designer, open a Source Qualifier transformation, and click the Properties tab.
Click in Number of Sorted Ports and enter the number of ports you want to sort.
The Integration Service adds the configured number of columns to an ORDER BY clause, starting from the top of the Source Qualifier transformation.
The source database sort order must correspond to the session sort order.
Sybase supports a maximum of 16 columns in an ORDER BY clause. If the source is Sybase, do not sort more than 16 columns.