MySQL Bugs: #5105: Missing Sort

Bug #5105	Missing Sort
Submitted:	19 Aug 2004 13:01	Modified:	8 Jan 2009 12:37
Reporter:	Andreas Götz	Email Updates:
Status:	Won't fix	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Administrator	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	1.0.9, 1.2.14	OS:	Windows (WinXP SP1)
Assigned to:	Mike Lischke	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
The column header in the table property editor do not sort on click. They seem to indicate physical column order, it would be nice if they could be sorted by name, data type etc.

(Same is true for Query Browser result sets.)

How to repeat:
Open catalog/table, click on edit table, click column header -> nothing happens

Suggested fix:
Add sorting to all list views including Query Browser.

Many thanks for writing a bug report.

This is still actual. You can click on Column Name, Datatype and so on but nothing happens. By intuition because this is true for lots of other software you will expect a sorting change of the list.

Anyway, this is confusing. Either possibility to click on it should be de-implemented or functionality for sorting should be implemented.

This implementation is (apart from the ability to click a column header, which could be disabled) by intention. Sorting a result set requires manipulation of the actual query (adding an order by clause), which we not consider a good behavior (it can easily lead to confusion). Thus add this clause yourself and you get the order you want. DB UI controls unfortunately have to be a bit different than usual controls, as they cannot hold the entire data (except for some very trivial cases) and they have no random access to the data. Hence you cannot generalize certain behavior (e.g. sorting on column click).

Sorting in the table editor is different issue. The problem here is: should the columns be stored in this (sorted) order when applying changes, or not? There is for sure a way to handle this problem (e.g. using incremental search oder asking the user etc. etc.) but this won't make it into the legacy tools. There is only maintenance happening until MySQL Workbench offers the same functionality.