ta has been received, sorted, and written as sorted runs to the local file system, a fully sorted stream can be obtained. This is done by reading the partially sorted runs from the local filesystem and sort-merging the records on the fly. Once the sorted streams of both inputs are available, both streams are sequentially read and merge-joined in a zig-zag fashion by comparing the sorted join key attributes, building join element pairs for matching keys, and advancing the sorted stream with the lower join ke