Question

Lets say I have a student table and there are 1000 records in it.

I would like to write such a query that should select only 100 records but I should be able to define the range.

Ex. 100 records showing from 501 to 600
or 100 records showing from 101 to 200

P.S. Yes! There is a identity column but it consists of random numbers.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

This should do it.

SELECT a.* FROM (
     SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY table.MySortCol) as RowNum,
     table.* -- columns you need
     FROM table
) a
WHERE a.RowNum between 1 and 100

This will give you a consistent result set even if you don’t have a sequential id on the table, so you can perform meaningful paging or what have you.