Paging and selecting rows starting with a letter from a DB

Question

I have a table where each row is a username with associated vote count

The goal is to do paging by username

so you can click on the letter C and get to the C's

But if there are only like 2 C's, then you wanna show 18 D's as well or 12 D's and 6 E's

So how do i find where to start the query like, select from whatever limit XX, 20 how do i find that XX where the C's start, F's start, etc

Basically treat the first letter as a number and select the top 20.

Answer 1

select * from table where name >= 'C' order by name limit 20

Answer 2

SELECT TOP 20 * FROM [Table] WHERE [username] >= 'C' ORDER BY [username]

Answer 3

You could always select the top 20.

SELECT Top 20 * FROM Users WHERE Username >= 'C' ORDER BY Username

Answer 4

The best way (assuming the pages go to web server and page #N is requested from web server) :

select bottom 20 from 
 ( select top N*20 *
 from   myTable
 order by username
 ) TOPNPAGES