Sorting Tabular Reports Overview

Reference:

Sorting and Displaying Data

You sort a report using vertical (BY) and horizontal (ACROSS) phrases:

BY displays the sort field values vertically, creating rows. Vertical sort fields are displayed in the left-most columns of the report.
ACROSS displays the sort field values horizontally, creating columns. Horizontal sort fields are displayed across the top of the report.
BY and ACROSS phrases used in the same report create rows and columns, producing a grid or matrix.

A request can include up to 128 sort phrases consisting of any combination of BY and ACROSS phrases.

Additional sorting options include:

Sorting from low to high values or from high to low values, and defining your own sorting sequence.
Sorting based on case-sensitive or case-insensitive collation sequence.
Leaving the value of the sort field out of the report.
Grouping numeric data into tiles such as percentiles or deciles.
Aggregating and sorting numeric columns simultaneously.
Grouping numeric data into ranges.
Ranking data, and selecting data based on rank.

Reference: Sorting and Displaying Data

There are two ways that you can sort information, depending on the type of display command you use:

You can sort and display individual values of a field using the PRINT or LIST command.
You can group and aggregate information. For example, you can show the number of field occurrences per sort value using the COUNT command, or summing the field values using the SUM command.

When you use the display commands PRINT and LIST, the report may generate several rows per sort value; specifically, one row for each occurrence of the display field. When you use the commands SUM and COUNT, the report generates one row for each unique set of sort values. For related information, see Sorting With Multiple Display Commands.

For details on all display commands, see Displaying Report Data.