Seeking clarity and/or opinions on "auto-sorting"

[Matt Klein]

Hi all -

I believe it was FM10 that introduced the feature where FileMaker maintains the sort order, if the records are sorted, on a layout automatically. So, if you have a window that setup to show records in list view and you sort those records, FileMaker automatically re-sorts when you modify the data in field(s) that the layout is sorted by.

I hope I explained accurately.

Anyway, I'm using FM11 currently and I'm wondering what effect that feature has on performance if you have 50 people that all have that same window visible all the time. I guess I want to know what exactly triggers that re-sort. Is it possible that all 50 workstations would try to re-sort at the same time? If so, it's my understanding that the workstations do the sorting, so even if they all re-sorted at the same time, would that cause a general performance issue?

It should be said that the number of visible records in the list at any moment in time is about 2000 on average. So, even if there are several hundred thousand records in the table, it's a fairly small subset of those records that are in the found set at any one time.

Would it be better to use a portal to show them these records in a sorted order? Does that gain anything? I try to avoid using sorted portals when possible as I've seen worse performance with these which is why I went with a list view instead of portal.

Anyway...I'd love to hear what you guys have to say. Feel free to correct any statements I made above. I'm not above being wrong.