OFFSET pagination divides a large result set into smaller pages by skipping rows from previous pages and returning a fixed number of rows for the current page.
Applications and reporting systems often need to display thousands of records without loading everything at once.
Return page 3 when each page contains 10 employees.
SELECT
EmployeeID,
EmployeeName,
Department
FROM Employees
ORDER BY EmployeeID
OFFSET 20 ROWS
FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;OFFSET pagination is used in web applications, APIs, administrative systems, database reports, and searchable data grids.
- Pagination divides results into pages.
- OFFSET skips rows from earlier pages.
- FETCH or LIMIT controls page size.
- ORDER BY provides stable ordering.
- Large offsets may become less efficient on very large datasets.
How does OFFSET pagination work?
It skips rows belonging to previous pages and returns a fixed number of rows for the requested page.
What is an important consideration with large OFFSET values?
Large offsets can become inefficient because the database may need to process and skip many preceding rows.