Ascending and Descending by "frequency" in Sort

Issue raised by: Mahao mah@pccms.pku.edu.cn Thu, 17 Dec 1998 15:02:39 -0800 (GMT)

What does "ascendingByFrequency" and "descendingByFrequency" (in sortRelation of SortKeySpec) mean?

"Ascending by frequency" (or "descending by frequency") is distinguished from "ascending" (or "descending") as illustrated in this example. Suppose we do a search on Moby Dick, get 6 hits and sort by author, ascending (conventionally ascending, i.e. not by frequency), and the resulting order is:

1. Author: Bradbury, Ray
   Title: Moby Dick and that Bride of Time
2. Author: Bradbury, Ray
   Title: Moby Dick and the Dandelion Wine
3. Author: Herbert, T. Walter
   Title: Moby-Dick and Calvinism
4. Author: Melville, Herman
   Title: Moby Dick : or, The whale : Paintings byLeRoy Neiman
5. Author: Melville, Herman
   Title: Moby-Dick : or, The whale; Commentary by Howard Mumford Jones
6. Author: Melville, Herman, 1819-1891.
   Title: Moby Dick : or, The whale; Introd. by A. S. W. Rosenbach.

If we do a "descending by frequency" sort, the order (of authors) would be Melville, Bradbury, Walker; because Melville had the highest frequency as author (3), Bradbury second (2), and Walker third (1). (Note that the ordering of items for a given author, e.g for the three Melville items, is determined by the server and cannot necessarily be predicted by the client.)