Paging SQL Server 2005 Results - sql

Question

How do I page results in SQL Server 2005?
I tried it in SQL Server 2000, but there was no reliable way to do this. I'm now wondering if SQL Server 2005 has any built in method?
What I mean by paging is, for example, if I list users by their username, I want to be able to only return the first 10 records, then the next 10 records and so on.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

You can use the Row_Number() function.
Its used as follows:
SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY UserName) As RowID, UserFirstName, UserLastName
FROM Users
From which it will yield a result set with a RowID field which you can use to page between.
SELECT *
FROM
( SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY UserName) As RowID, UserFirstName, UserLastName
FROM Users
) As RowResults
WHERE RowID Between 5 AND 10
etc

Answer 2

If you're trying to get it in one statement (the total plus the paging). You might need to explore SQL Server support for the partition by clause (windowing functions in ANSI SQL terms). In Oracle the syntax is just like the example above using row_number(), but I have also added a partition by clause to get the total number of rows included with each row returned in the paging (total rows is 1,262):
SELECT rn, total_rows, x.OWNER, x.object_name, x.object_type
FROM (SELECT COUNT (*) OVER (PARTITION BY owner) AS TOTAL_ROWS,
ROW_NUMBER () OVER (ORDER BY 1) AS rn, uo.*
FROM all_objects uo
WHERE owner = 'CSEIS') x
WHERE rn BETWEEN 6 AND 10
Note that I have where owner = 'CSEIS' and my partition by is on owner. So the results are:
RN TOTAL_ROWS OWNER OBJECT_NAME OBJECT_TYPE
6 1262 CSEIS CG$BDS_MODIFICATION_TYPES TRIGGER
7 1262 CSEIS CG$AUS_MODIFICATION_TYPES TRIGGER
8 1262 CSEIS CG$BDR_MODIFICATION_TYPES TRIGGER
9 1262 CSEIS CG$ADS_MODIFICATION_TYPES TRIGGER
10 1262 CSEIS CG$BIS_LANGUAGES TRIGGER

Answer 3

The accepted answer for this doesn't actually work for me...I had to jump through one more hoop to get it to work.
When I tried the answer
SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY UserName) As RowID, UserFirstName, UserLastName
FROM Users
WHERE RowID Between 0 AND 9
it failed, complaining that it didn't know what RowID was.
I had to wrap it in an inner select like this:
SELECT *
FROM
(SELECT
Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY UserName) As RowID, UserFirstName, UserLastName
FROM Users
) innerSelect
WHERE RowID Between 0 AND 9
and then it worked.

Answer 4

When I need to do paging, I typically use a temporary table as well. You can use an output parameter to return the total number of records. The case statements in the select allow you to sort the data on specific columns without needing to resort to dynamic SQL.
--Declaration--
--Variables
#StartIndex INT,
#PageSize INT,
#SortColumn VARCHAR(50),
#SortDirection CHAR(3),
#Results INT OUTPUT
--Statements--
SELECT #Results = COUNT(ID) FROM Customers
WHERE FirstName LIKE '%a%'
SET #StartIndex = #StartIndex - 1 --Either do this here or in code, but be consistent
CREATE TABLE #Page(ROW INT IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL, id INT, sorting_1 SQL_VARIANT, sorting_2 SQL_VARIANT)
INSERT INTO #Page(ID, sorting_1, sorting_2)
SELECT TOP (#StartIndex + #PageSize)
ID,
CASE
WHEN #SortColumn='FirstName' AND #SortDirection='ASC' THEN CAST(FirstName AS SQL_VARIANT)
WHEN #SortColumn='LastName' AND #SortDirection='ASC' THEN CAST(LastName AS SQL_VARIANT)
ELSE NULL
END AS sort_1,
CASE
WHEN #SortColumn='FirstName' AND #SortDirection='DES' THEN CAST(FirstName AS SQL_VARIANT)
WHEN #SortColumn='LastName' AND #SortDirection='DES' THEN CAST(LastName AS SQL_VARIANT)
ELSE NULL
END AS sort_2
FROM (
SELECT
CustomerId AS ID,
FirstName,
LastName
FROM Customers
WHERE
FirstName LIKE '%a%'
) C
ORDER BY sort_1 ASC, sort_2 DESC, ID ASC;
SELECT
ID,
Customers.FirstName,
Customers.LastName
FROM #Page
INNER JOIN Customers ON
ID = Customers.CustomerId
WHERE ROW > #StartIndex AND ROW <= (#StartIndex + #PageSize)
ORDER BY ROW ASC
DROP TABLE #Page

Answer 5

I believe you'd need to perform a separate query to accomplish that unfortionately.
I was able to accomplish this at my previous position using some help from this page:
Paging in DotNet 2.0
They also have it pulling a row count seperately.

Answer 6

Here's what I do for paging: All of my big queries that need to be paged are coded as inserts into a temp table. The temp table has an identity field that will act in a similar manner to the row_number() mentioned above. I store the number of rows in the temp table in an output parameter so the calling code knows how many total records there are. The calling code also specifies which page it wants, and how many rows per page, which are selected out from the temp table.
The cool thing about doing it this way is that I also have an "Export" link that allows you to get all rows from the report returned as CSV above every grid in my application. This link uses the same stored procedure: you just return the contents of the temp table instead of doing the paging logic. This placates users who hate paging, and want to see everything, and want to sort it in a million different ways.