> I have an idea. Can he run CLUSTER on the data? If so, the sort will
> not use small batches, and the disk space during sort will be reduced.
I think a real winner would be to use an existing index. This is what others do
to eliminate a sort completely. Of course the optimizer has to choose what is cheaper
on a per query basis (index access or sort of result set).
result set small --> use sort
result set large --> use available index
Andreas