Kevin, asumming this thread is a result in the comparison between SQL server and MySQL, you might want to read
http://codebetter.com/blogs/karlseguin/archive/2006/04/17/142964.aspx

which according to the author makes paging easier in MySql than in SQL server 2005.

Since I have no particular knowledge of all the features in MySQL, I'm sure you won't mind to stick with SQL server 2000, but in fact I made it as ANSI SQL compatible as possible.

Of one thing I'm not sure in your description. When you click a alphabetic char, is it supposed to drill down and the number scopes to the select char(s) ?

I did quickly write this down, and not actually tested anything, but if you read the code, you can see what I'm doing here. The key here is to use TOP to avoid unnesserary processing of irrelevant records.

As you would expect, I'm avoiding SPs because of flexibility and are using VFP as the middle tier that runs on the application server. Without writing an entire application, here is what I came up with.

PROCEDURE GetPageResult(nPageSize, lFirst, lLast, nOffset, cOffSet, cWhere, cOrderBy)
LOCAL cOrderBy2, cOrderBy3, cPageSize, cTop

* nPageSize = Size of the pages, in your example 50
* lFirst, Show first page
* lLast, Show last page
* nOffSet, Show from record nOffset onwards
* cOffset, drilldown to an alphabetic character selected (could be one or more, so A,B,C or AA, AB, AC etc)

* cWhere: It is assumed that the selection criteria: cWhere  is constructed by an upper layer. So for example
	* WHERE State = 'State of California' AND status IN(2,3) 
	* WHERE Address LIKE  '%Lane%' AND State is 'NY' AND status = 1

* cOrderBy Indicates the fields on which the resultsets need to be ordered. This could be a comma delimited list
	* in this case the selection of offset would only operate on the first column in the list

* It assumed that the current page location is handled by the application layer (stateless) and the page number display is assumed
* to be handled by the upper layer. This routine is only retrieving the requested pages from the backend.


* Getting the 50 located records.

cOrderBy2 = cOrderBy
cOrderBy3 = cOrderBy
cPageSize = STR(nPageSize)
cTop = cPageSize

** Handling the naviation to a particular starting char 

cWhere = cWhere + IIF(EMPTY(cOffSet,'',' AND '+GETWORDNUM(cOrderBY,1) + " LIKE '"+ALLTRIM(cOffSet))+"%'"

DO CASE
	CASE lLast
		cOrderBy2 = cOrderBy+' DESC'
		
	CASE nOffSet > 0
		cTop = STR(nOffset+nPageSize)
		cOrderBy3 = cOrderBy3+' DESC'
ENDCASE

** SQL Statement will return at most (nPageSize records) with the total rowcount of the selection in the Totalrows column

TEXT TO cSQL TEXTMERGE NOSHOW
	SELECT TOP <<cPageSize>> * FROM (
		SELECT TOP <<cPageSize>> * FROM (
			SELECT TOP <<cTop>> *
				FROM Customers
				WHERE <<cWhere>>
				ORDER BY <<cOrderBy2>> ) as A
			ORDER BY <<OrderBy3>>) as B
		INNER JOIN (SELECT COUNT(*)  as totalrows FROM Customers WHERE <<cWhere>>) as C ON 1 = 1
		ORDER BY <<cOrderby>>	
ENDTEXT

=SQLEXEC(Applic.Sqlhandle, cSql, 'QueryResult')
RETURN