What is the best way to paginate results in SQL Server

Question

What is the best way (performance wise) to paginate results in SQL Server 2000, 2005, 2008, 2012 if you also want to get the total number of results (before paginating)?

Answer 1

There is a good overview of different paging techniques at http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/PagingLarge.aspx

I've used ROWCOUNT method quite often mostly with SQL Server 2000 (will work with 2005 & 2008 too, just measure performance compared to ROW_NUMBER), it's lightning fast, but you need to make sure that the sorted column(s) have (mostly) unique values.