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

For SQL Server 2000 you can simulate ROW_NUMBER() using a table variable with an IDENTITY column:

DECLARE @pageNo int -- 1 based
DECLARE @pageSize int
SET @pageNo = 51
SET @pageSize = 20

DECLARE @firstRecord int
DECLARE @lastRecord int
SET @firstRecord = (@pageNo - 1) * @pageSize + 1 -- 1001
SET @lastRecord = @firstRecord + @pageSize - 1   -- 1020

DECLARE @orderedKeys TABLE (
  rownum int IDENTITY NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
  TableKey int NOT NULL
)

SET ROWCOUNT @lastRecord
INSERT INTO @orderedKeys (TableKey) SELECT ID FROM Orders WHERE OrderDate >= '1980-01-01' ORDER BY OrderDate

SET ROWCOUNT 0

SELECT t.*
FROM Orders t
  INNER JOIN @orderedKeys o ON o.TableKey = t.ID
WHERE o.rownum >= @firstRecord
ORDER BY o.rownum

This approach can be extended to tables with multi-column keys, and it doesn't incur the performance overhead of using OR (which skips index usage). The downside is the amount of temporary space used up if the data set is very large and one is near the last page. I did not test cursor performance in that case, but it might be better.

Note that this approach could be optimized for the first page of data. Also, ROWCOUNT was used since TOP does not accept a variable in SQL Server 2000.