>From: David Jencks <david@...>
>Well, it makes sense if he includes an order by clause.
> But there is no way to determine the desired records in that case
>other than determining at least the first 50,010 records. So, the
>"first...skip" solution is as good as possible.

Well, from the purely theoretical POV, if there is an
index suitable for ordering, and this index is strored in
a kind of balancd tree, then there should be possible to
determine index value for Nth record in a logarithmic
time. Whether this optimisation is useful enough is, of
course, an entirely different question.
---
Professional hosting for everyone - http://www.host.ru