In Oracle 12c, how can we implement pagination on large table using rowid?

Question

I am new to the database. I would like to implement pagination on large tables using rowid but what I found that rowid can be alphanumeric digits and not necessarily they are in any order so I wonder if we can use them to paginate the tables. The table from which I would like to get the records in pagination is very large table having more than 2 billion records and if we execute the query based on offset and length then that comes up with an error Ora1652 unable to extend temp segment in tablespace temp. So is there way to get the results in pagination using rowid.

Any help would be appreciated thank you in advance.

Edited:

Let's suppose I have a Table say LARGE_ROWS having ID and RANDOM two columns whereas ID is the primary key column.

SELECT /*+ ordered use_nl(p s) */
 *
FROM
 (
 SELECT
 ROWNUM RN,
 RD
 FROM
 (
 SELECT
 ROWID RD
 FROM
 large_rows
 ORDER BY
 large_rows.id
 ) T
 WHERE
 ROWNUM < 1000
 ) P,
 large_rows S
WHERE
 RN > 900
 AND P.RD = S.ROWID;

• Colin 't Hart: When using rowid you will get the rows in the order they are stored in the table, so you can’t sort them any other way.
• Wernfried Domscheit: I would say, the primary solution should be: Increase your TEMP tablespace
• Wernfried Domscheit: Usually Nested Loops (NL) are intended for small tables. What happens when you remove the hint?

Answer 1

You need to try following by yourself multiple times to see if you are getting any improvement in performance with the correct result.

I tried different approaches and Following is giving good performance in my case.

DROP TABLE STUDENT;
CREATE TABLE student (RNO NUMBER, NAME VARCHAR2(1000));
-- I have just added 2,000,000 records
INSERT INTO STUDENT
SELECT LEVEL, 'STUDENT - ' || LEVEL
FROM DUAL CONNECT BY LEVEL <= 2000000;
-- selecting the 10th page of length 100 each
SELECT /*+ ordered use_nl(p s) */
 *
FROM
 (
 SELECT
 ROWNUM RN,
 RD
 FROM
 (
 SELECT
 ROWID RD
 FROM
 STUDENT
 ORDER BY
 RNO
 ) T
 WHERE
 ROWNUM < 1000
 ) P,
 STUDENT S
WHERE
 RN > 900
 AND P.RD = S.ROWID;

A Rowid is made by OOOOOOFFFBBBBBBRRR O is object id,F is file id,B is block id,R is row number. Starting from 11g some new mechanism is introduced. If the next rowid is in the same block with the current row, then the current block can be reused. Hence, "Consistent gets" increase.

I hope you will get direction in solving your issue.

Cheers!!

• Ashish Pancholi: Thanks. Can you please edit your example based on my Table details? I do not understand two things in your example: Do I need to add a NUMBER type column to get this work? Can't it work with any Primary Key of the column, even it's not NUMBER type?
• Popeye: Number datatype is not needed, You can use your primary keys instead of RNO of my example
• Ashish Pancholi: Is order by necessary?
• Popeye: Yes, Otherwise same data may appear in different pages (repetitive data)