Setting the view sort order
Unlike most databases, including extended directory catalogs, the condensed directory catalog uses a unique design that combines multiple documents from Domino® directories into single documents. While lookups in most databases are possible through searches to sorted views, lookups to condensed directory catalogs require entries to be ordered within documents in the same manner as the view's sort ordering.
About this task
To set both a condensed directory catalog's view sort order and the ordering of the multiple entries in a document, set the desired sort order in the database's tab, and run the Dircat task. Client users must not change the default sort ordering of the condensed directory catalog replicas themselves, because doing so will not have the desired effect (condensed directory catalog entry intra-document ordering is fixed at the time of aggregation), and may return fewer than expected lookup results in response to a lookup.
If you have different sets of client users each wishing to have different sort orders, you must create separate copies (not replicas) of the condensed directory catalog with the desired sort orders. For example, if you have English, French, and Danish users who each want their condensed directory catalog contents ordered according to their locale, you must create three separate copies of the condensed directory catalog. The files should have their default sort order set respectively to Latin1, French, and Danish/Norwegian. It may be useful to establish a naming convention where the sort order appears in the condensed directory catalog file names: CDC-EN.NSF, CDC-FR.NSF, and CDC-DK.NSF.
Extended directory catalogs are created using the same design as the Domino Directory, and therefore contain views that have a Unicode sort ordering set by default so that directory searches yield consistent search results across Domino servers, even if those servers have different sort orders.
When the Dircat task performs the initial build or full rebuild of a condensed directory catalog, it stores the entries inside the catalog documents in accordance with the default sort order. If the default sort order is blank, the Dircat task will obtain a sort ordering from the Domino environment and explicitly set the catalog's default sort order with it. When the Dircat task updates a condensed directory catalog, it first verifies the default sort order matches the ordering of entries in condensed directory catalog documents. If it discovers discrepancies between the two orders, the Dircat task will issue an event telling the administrator to use Dircat to perform a full rebuild.