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

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

Answer 2

This feature is now made easy in SQL Server 2012. This is working from SQL Server 2012 onwards.

Limit with offset to select 11 to 20 rows in SQL Server:

SELECT email FROM emailTable 
WHERE user_id=3
ORDER BY Id
OFFSET 10 ROWS
FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

• OFFSET: number of skipped rows
• NEXT: required number of next rows

Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/t-sql/queries/select-order-by-clause-transact-sql?view=sql-server-2017

Answer 3

There is here someone telling about this feature in sql 2011, its sad they choose a little different keyword "OFFSET / FETCH" but its not standart then ok.

Answer 4

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 5

select top (@TakeCount) * --FETCH NEXT
from(
    Select  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (order by StartDate) AS rowid,*
    From YourTable
)A
where Rowid>@SkipCount --OFFSET

Answer 6

Adding a slight variation on Aaronaught's solution, I typically parametrize page number (@PageNum) and page size (@PageSize). This way each page click event just sends in the requested page number along with a configurable page size:

begin
    with My_CTE  as
    (
         SELECT col1,
              ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY col1) AS row_number
     FROM
          My_Table
     WHERE
          <<<whatever>>>
    )
    select * from My_CTE
            WHERE RowNum BETWEEN (@PageNum - 1) * (@PageSize + 1) 
                              AND @PageNum * @PageSize

end