I’m working on a web application that needs to display large datasets from SQL Server in pages. I need to show results in chunks (like 20 records per page) but also display the total count of all matching records to the user.
I’m wondering what’s the most efficient approach for this across different SQL Server versions including 2000, 2005, 2008, and 2012. Should I use separate queries for getting the page data and total count, or is there a better way to get both in one go?
Performance is really important since some of my tables have millions of rows. What pagination techniques work best for large datasets without causing timeouts or memory issues?
windowing functions can use up memory a lot on huge datasets. i tend to cache the total count separately and only paginate the actual data. if you’re fine with dirty reads, add a NOLOCK hint - it seriously boosts performance with millions of rows and lots of users hitting the same tables.
Interesting challenge! For newer versions, you could try CTE with ROW_NUMBER(). What queries are you running tho? Are they mostly SELECT * or do you have complex joins and WHERE clauses? That’ll really determine which approach works best for you.
OFFSET and FETCH (SQL Server 2012+) are cleanest for pagination, but ROW_NUMBER() works across all versions if you need backward compatibility. For the total count, just add COUNT(*) OVER() to your SELECT - you’ll get both paginated results and total count in one query instead of running separate ones. Performance stays solid on large datasets too. Just make sure your ORDER BY columns are indexed or you’ll hit sorting bottlenecks on those million-row tables.