for consistency with paginiation

issue #1228

issue #1207

strict sql dbms like postgres would fail otherwise

this allows us to implement other activerecord implementations based on
NoSQL dbms

Control statements based on the if and elseif constructs must have a single space before the opening parenthesis of the conditional and a single space after the closing parenthesis.

fixes #1072

fixes #997

- cleanup API and usage, add documetation link
- introduced @property feature in getter or setter which has precedence
  over @return or @param tag if present

correct creation of new Sort object if none is there