Optimizing queries for the next and previous element

Question

I am looking for the best way to retrieve the next and previous records of a record without running a full query. I have a fully implemented solution in place, and would like to

Answer 1

I'm not sure whether I understood right, so if not, just tell me ;)

Let's say, that the givens are the query for the sorted list and the current offset in that list, i.e. we have a $query and an $n.

A very obvious solution to minimize the queries, would be to fetch all the data at once:

list($prev, $current, $next) = DB::q($query . ' LIMIT ?i, 3', $n - 1)->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_NUM);

That statement fetches the previous, the current and the next elements from the database in the current sorting order and puts the associated information into the corresponding variables.

But as this solution is too simple, I assume I misunderstood something.