What is Sqlpaging in SqlServer 2005 ?
Santosh Kumar Kotnala
Introduction
Developers and database administrators have long debated methods for paging recordset results from Microsoft SQL Server, trying to balance ease of use with performance. The simplest methods were less efficient because they retrieved entire datasets from SQL Server before eliminating records which were not to be included, while the best-performing methods handled all paging on the server with more complex scripting. The ROW_NUMBER() function introduced in SQL Server 2005 provides an efficient way to limit results relatively easily.
Paging Efficiency
In order to scale well, most applications only work with a portion of the available data at a given time. Web-based data maintenance applications are the most common example of this, and several data-bindable ASP.NET classes (such as GridView and Datagrid) have built-in support for paging results. While it is possible to handle paging within the web page code, this may require transferring all of the data from the database server to the web server every time the control is updated. To improve performance and efficiency, data which will not be used should be eliminated from processing as early as possible.
Paging Methods
Many popular databases offer functions allowing you to limit which rows are returned for a given query based upon their position within the record set. For example, MySQL provides the LIMIT qualifier, which takes two parameters. The first LIMIT parameter specifies which (zero-based) row number will be the first record returned, and the second parameter specifies the maximum number of records returned. The query: SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 20,13 ...will return the 20th through the 32nd records -- assuming at least 33 records are available to return. If fewer than 33 records are available, the query will return all records from record 20 on. If fewer than 20 records are available, none will be returned. SQL Server does not have this functionality, however the 2005 release does have a number of other new tricks. For instance, support for CLR procedures means it is possible to use existing paging methods to write VB.NET or C# code that would execute within the SQL Server environment. Unfortunately, CLR procedures are not as efficient as native Transact SQL. To ensure best performance, queries should still be written in TSQL whenever practical.
Many popular databases offer functions allowing you to limit which rows are returned for a given query based upon their position within the record set. For example, MySQL provides the LIMIT qualifier, which takes two parameters. The first LIMIT parameter specifies which (zero-based) row number will be the first record returned, and the second parameter specifies the maximum number of records returned. The query:
SELECT * FROM table LIMIT 20,13
...will return the 20th through the 32nd records -- assuming at least 33 records are available to return. If fewer than 33 records are available, the query will return all records from record 20 on. If fewer than 20 records are available, none will be returned.
SQL Server does not have this functionality, however the 2005 release does have a number of other new tricks. For instance, support for CLR procedures means it is possible to use existing paging methods to write VB.NET or C# code that would execute within the SQL Server environment. Unfortunately, CLR procedures are not as efficient as native Transact SQL. To ensure best performance, queries should still be written in TSQL whenever practical.