mod-inventory APIs can add the location name to the result set, but usually they cannot sort on the location name because mod-inventory passes the request to mod-inventory-storage and sorting is handled by mod-inventory-storage. mod-inventory APIs can sort by location name if all records (ignoring offset and limit) are loaded into mod-inventory’s memory and sorted in memory. There can be millions of matching holdings records.

This is an interesting, fascinating, and thorough technical explanation of “why this API performs in unexpected ways”. Thank you, ! But the unexpectedness of this API remains, and IMO that is the real problem here. You have solved a problem by flouting convention, and thus created another problem as a knock-on effect.

In fact, the UI does display the location-name, so probably the best approach is to follow the advice in the description and use mod-inventory or mod-search APIs to retrieve the necessary fields in a predictable fashion. I do not generally work in ui-inventory, that’s Folijet’s domain, so I will let (their tech lead) decide if the friction from this API is bothersome enough to open a ticket there to use a different API, or just handle the sort client-side.

I’m fine closing this as “Won’t do”, but I appreciate you taking the time and effort to explain the situation.

We do not join the holdings table and the location table unconditionally to get the best performance.

Use mod-inventory APIs or mod-search APIs if you need the location name in the result set.

RMB only partially supports table joins:

https://github.com/folio-org/raml-module-builder?tab=readme-ov-file#cql2pgjson-foreign-key-cross-table-index-queries

CQL doesn’t support the join condition (the SQL ON clause), and joins may result in full table scans and should be avoided in most cases.

Therefore most joins require hand-written SQL and doesn’t support all queries but only a specific use case that is known not to result in a table scan. One example is .

It requires a rewrite of RMB’s CQL implementation if the location name should be supported in the query and returned in the result set; this requires too much development work. Therefore I suggest to close this as “Won’t do”.