retrieve specific range of rows in a SQL Server table

Question

I have a table structure like (OrderID [uniqueidentifier], OrderDesciption [nvarchar]), I am using ADO.Net + C# + VSTS 2008 + SQL Server 2008. The table is big, and I want to let client give me two inputs, begin range index and end range index, and I will return specific rows of the table which is in the range (between begin range index and end range index).

For example, if the client inputs to me 50, 100, and I want to return the 50th row until the 100th row.

thanks in advance, George

Answer 1

You can use ROW_NUMBER in TSQL (2005 onwards) to do this:

SELECT  ID, Foo, Bar
FROM     (SELECT  ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY ID ASC) AS Row,
          ID, Foo, Bar
FROM    SomeTable) tmp
WHERE   Row >= 50 AND Row <= 100

Or with LINQ-to-SQL etc:

var qry = ctx.Table.Skip(50).Take(50); // or similar

Answer 2

Basically, your best bet in SQL Server 2005 and 2008 is a CTE - Common Table Expression - with a ROW_NUMBER() function in it - something like this:

WITH MyOrders AS
(
  SELECT
    OrderID,
    OrderDescription,
    ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY OrderID) as 'RowNum'
  FROM YourOrders
)
SELECT * FROM MyOrders
WHERE RowNum BETWEEN 50 AND 100

But this requires a useful and suitable ORDER BY clause, and ordering by a GUID is really not a good idea. DATETIME or an ever-increasing ID would be best.

Marc