How to implement pagination query by using Oracle PL/SQL?

Oracle implemented ANSI standards for data paging since 12c release. The following illustrates the syntax of the row limiting clause:

[ OFFSET offset ROWS]

FETCH NEXT [ row_count | percent PERCENT ] ROWS [ ONLY | WITH TIES ]

 OFFSET clause

The OFFSET clause specifies the number of rows to skip before the row limiting starts. The OFFSET clause is optional. If you skip it, then offset is 0 and row limiting starts with the first row.

The offset must be a number or an expression that evaluates to a number. The offset is subjected to the following rules:

• If the offset is negative, then it is treated as 0.
• If the offset is NULL or greater than the number of rows returned by the query, then no row is returned.
• If the offset includes a fraction, then the fractional portion is truncated.

 FETCH clause

The FETCH clause specifies the number of rows or percentage of rows to return.

For the semantic clarity purpose, you can use the keyword ROW instead of ROWS, FIRST instead of  NEXT. For example, the following clauses behavior the same:

FETCH NEXT 1 ROWS

FETCH FIRST 1 ROW

 ONLY | WITH TIES

The ONLY returns exactly the number of rows or percentage of rows after FETCH NEXT (or FIRST).

The WITH TIES returns additional rows with the same sort key as the last row fetched. Note that if you use WITH TIES, you must specify an ORDER BY clause in the query. If you don’t, the query will not return the additional rows.

Top N rows example

The following statement returns the top 10 transactions with the highest quantities:

SELECT * FROM transaction

ORDER BY quantity desc

FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

WITH TIES example

The following query uses the row limiting clause with the WITH TIES option:

SELECT product_name, quantity FROM inventories

 INNER JOIN products USING(product_id)

ORDER BY quantity DESC

FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS WITH TIES;

Even though the query requested 10 rows, because it had the WITH TIES option, the query returned two more additional rows. Notice that these two additional rows have the same value in the quantity column as the row 10.