Regarding the Sorter transformation and assuming that Powercenter is not utilizing Pushdown Optimization, select the...

When the distinct check box is selected, every port in the sorter transformation will have the sort key selection enabled

When transformation scope is set to a value of transaction, the sorter will sort on every record in the pipeline before it releases any data. The intermediate sort file will have markers for each transaction.

If the distinct check box is not checked, the sorter will produce one record per unique key

The Sorter transformation will utilize database indexes from the source database to perform the sort