SQL Server : large DB Query In Chunks

Question

I am using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, I have minimal expertise in SQL Server but I have used MySQL in the past and pretty good at it.

My question is: I have a rather large database with over 130m+ records.

I wish to only get the URL column but every single record in this column.

Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio jams up when saving to a file due to one error or another so I have come to the conclusion that I need to do this in chunks.

I am running this command at the moment and saving to file

SELECT TOP 20000000 [URL] 
FROM [dbo].[siteentry] 
WHERE [Content] LIKE '' 

However when this command finishes I have 0 clue how to skip the first 20,000,000 and continue onto the next batch of 20,000,000 without killing the server.

Any help would be great.

Answer 1

With SQL Server 2012, you can use the OFFSET...FETCH commands:

SELECT [URL] 
FROM [dbo].[siteentry] 
WHERE [Content] LIKE '' 
ORDER BY (some column)
    OFFSET 20000 ROWS
    FETCH NEXT 20000 ROWS ONLY

For this to work, you must order by some column in your table - which you should anyway, since a TOP .... without an ORDER BY is useless - you'll get back arbitrary rows

Answer 2

You can use an "offset" to skip the rows. Check https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg699618(v=sql.110).aspx for more information.