Why should you care?

Page 2 of products in a shop UI needs skip/take — OFFSET FETCH does that in T-SQL.

See it live — copy this example

Run in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) or Azure Data Studio.

USE DataVerse;
DECLARE @Page INT = 2, @PageSize INT = 2;
SELECT OrderId, City, Amount
FROM dbo.Orders
ORDER BY OrderId
OFFSET (@Page - 1) * @PageSize ROWS
FETCH NEXT @PageSize ROWS ONLY;

What happened?

• Page 2 with size 2 skips the first two OrderId values and returns the next two.
• Variables make pagination reusable from an API.

Practice next

1. Ensure at least four orders exist.
2. Run with @Page = 1 and @Page = 2.
3. Change @PageSize to 3.
4. Page products by ProductId with page size 10.
5. Return page metadata using COUNT(*) OVER() in a separate query.

Remember

OFFSET skips; FETCH takes the next page. ORDER BY is mandatory. Good default for simple API paging.

Catalog page API

GET /orders?page=3&size=20 uses OFFSET FETCH on DataVerse.

Outcome: Mobile app scrolls without downloading all history.