In SQL Server 2005, normally when we do paging we need to use CTE or nested SELECT Statement, but in SQL Server 2012 we can use OFFSET and FETCH to do the paging

Let’s start of how we normally do paging in SQL Server 2005/2008 – this will return the first 10 rows ordered by REF

WITH Fields AS
(
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY REF) AS RowNumber
FROM SU_FIELD
)
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY
FROM Fields
WHERE RowNumber BETWEEN 1 AND 10
ORDER BY RowNumber ASC;

To move to next page we do

WITH Fields AS
(
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY REF) AS RowNumber
FROM SU_FIELD
)
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY
FROM Fields
WHERE RowNumber BETWEEN 11 AND 20
ORDER BY RowNumber ASC;

In SQL Server 2012 – it looks much more simpler to write the query. OFFSET is used for skipping the first x rows ad FETCH NEXT is used to control how many records to be returned

–This will return 10 records without skipping any row (REF from 0 – 9)
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY
FROM SU_FIELD
ORDER BY REF
OFFSET 0 ROWS
FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;

to move to the next page

–This will return 10 records with skipping first 10 rows (REF from 10 – 19)
SELECT REF, NAME, DISPLAY
FROM SU_FIELD
ORDER BY REF
OFFSET 10 ROWS
FETCH NEXT 10 ROWS ONLY;