I don’t understand why the OFFSET clause doesn’t work when I’m retrieving a table sorted by a column that contains all NULL values?
For example, let’s say I have a table People with ID, Gender, and Race columns. The Race column contains all NULL values.
When I run these to queries, why do they retrieve the same data?
SELECT *
FROM People
ORDER BY Race ASC
OFFSET 0 ROWS --offset 0 rows
FETCH NEXT 15 ROWS ONLY
SELECT *
FROM People
ORDER BY Race ASC
OFFSET 15 ROWS --offset 15 rows
FETCH NEXT 15 ROWS ONLY
I understand ordering is not functioning, since all values in Race column are NULL. I don’t understand why it doesn’t offset 15 rows in the second query. OFFSET functions properly only if the column contains some non-NULL values.
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Answer
If Race is not unique then the order in that group is not guaranteed to repeat. Add ID to the sort to get a repeatable sort.
SELECT * FROM People ORDER BY Race, ID OFFSET 0 ROWS FETCH NEXT 15 ROWS ONLY SELECT * FROM People ORDER BY Race, ID OFFSET 15 ROWS FETCH NEXT 15 ROWS ONLY