Hi all,

Is there any kind of functionality, similar to a dynamic row ID, that I
could use to retrieve a subset of rows from the middle of a result set,
based simply on the position of the rows within the result set? For
example, I'd like to be able to say, "Give me only the 100th through
120th rows of this result set". Obviously we use an order by in the
query to guarantee that the entire result set always looks like we
expect it to.

I could just select all rows and let the code handle this, but this
forces the entire result set - sometimes containing millions of rows -
to come across the network, increasing traffic. I could limit the
result set by setting rowcount to my maximum value (in the above
example, 120) but depending on the query, table size, etc. this could
still result in much unnecessary network traffic.

This could be accomplished with a temp table or a cursor with some
creativity, but I would like to have a dynamic solution... this option
would require specific solutions for each unique result set I am
parsing, and there are too many to go through the process of creating a
solution for each one.

If sybase internally numbered the rows in the result set in a somehow
accessible way, this might be the solution, but I'm not aware of any
such functionality in Sybase.

Most, if not all, of the tables involved do not have identity keys, so
I cannot use these to help. If I were to implement them, I would have
to guarantee no gaps in the values, which I could do, but these are
tables with very heavy activity and we're not willing to take the
performance hit of not pre-caching identity values.

Any thoughts or ideas on how to accomplish this would be appreciated.
We're running ASE 12.5.3, ESD#1, Sun Solaris platform.

Thanks in advance!

-Mike