This issue has been discussed quite often here and in Jira, but I haven't seen any definite answers.

To start with, I'm using custom datamodel with dataTable pagination which loads data lazily and everything is working fine. However, I would like to add sorting to the headers of table, and to me it seems that you can't currently do that at database level (using orderBy in rich:column will require the whole data set).

The solution proposed in the forum would be to use normal commandLink's in the rich:column. The downside of this is that you need to have icons etc conditionally rendered in every column. The preferable solution would be, that you could just get the sort columns and direction set to your bean by some rich:column attribute, and you could fetch the data correctly sorted from db.

Is this a feasible feature, or is there any better solutions? Should I submit a JIRA issue?