Equivalent of LIMIT and OFFSET for SQL Server?

Question

In PostgreSQL there is the Limit and Offset keywords which will allow very easy pagination of result sets. What is the equivalent syntax for Sql Server?

Answer 1

See TOP and BETWEEN

Answer 2

The equivalent of LIMIT is SET ROWCOUNT, but if you want generic pagination it's better to write a query like this:

;WITH Results_CTE AS
(
    SELECT
        Col1, Col2, ...,
        ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SortCol1, SortCol2, ...) AS RowNum
    FROM Table
    WHERE <whatever>
)
SELECT *
FROM Results_CTE
WHERE RowNum >= @Offset
AND RowNum < @Offset + @Limit

The advantage here is the parameterization of the offset and limit in case you decide to change your paging options (or allow the user to do so).

Note: the @Offset parameter should use one-based indexing for this rather than the normal zero-based indexing.

Answer 3

In SQL server you would use TOP together with ROW_NUMBER()

Answer 4

You can use ROW_NUMBER in a Common Table Expression to achieve this.

;WITH My_CTE AS
(
     SELECT
          col1,
          col2,
          ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY col1) AS row_number
     FROM
          My_Table
     WHERE
          <<<whatever>>>
)
SELECT
     col1,
     col2
FROM
     My_CTE
WHERE
     row_number BETWEEN @start_row AND @end_row

Answer 5

I would recommend you to read this interesting article about SQL Server pagination.