The purpose of this document is to provide an explanation of how the iSeries sorts data and how you can make adjustments to the sorting sequence. This is important because EBCDIC-based systems sort data alpha characters first, then numeric characters, while ASCII data is sorted numeric first, then alpha characters. Domino for iSeries, although native on the iSeries server, still sorts data as an ASCII-based system. With this information you can understand how to change the sort order of data when retrieved from UDB DB2. Ideally, this causes the data that is retrieved from UDB DB2 to be presorted before it is presented to the Lotus Enterprise Integrator activity, therefore eliminating the need for using an order metaconnector against a DB2 connector when retrieving UDB DB2 data from an iSeries server. By default, the iSeries is not configured to sort data, which causes a sort/order mismatch when retrieving data from UDB DB2 tables on the iSeries server via Lotus Domino, especially when using LEI and Domino Enterprise Connection Services (DECS). This is most noticeable when running an LEI replication activity from DB2 to Notes, where unnecessary record insert/deletes occur. LEI provides an order metaconnector that can be used to address this specific issue. However, the use of this metaconnector affects the performance of LEI, and, if the result set is too large, can cause the activity to fail.