Tweak DataSet Paging in ASP.Net

After I posted a previous article comparing between many methods of Paging in ASP and ASP.Net, I wanted to focus on how to tweak paging using DataSet as it is unpopular tip and it saves lots of time to return records in closer pages which usually gets more hits than further pages...

The method DbDataAdapter.Fill(dataSet As DataSet, startRecord As Integer, maxRecords As Integer, srcTable As String) specifies the start record and number of records to fill the DataSet with, and of course you need to run a count query first to calculate PageCount

'Count Query
Cmd.CommandText = "Select count(ID) from Users where.."
Count = CInt(Cmd.ExecuteScalar())
PageCount = Math.Ceiling(Count / PageSize)

'Select Query
cmd.CommandText = "Select Top " & (PageIndex * PageSize) & " * from Users where.. Order By.."

Dim DS As New DataSet
Dim DA As DbDataAdapter = PFactory.CreateDataAdapter()
DA.SelectCommand = Cmd
DA.Fill(DS, (PageIndex - 1) * PageSize, PageSize, SrcTable)
Dim DT As New DataTable= DS.Tables(SrcTable)
DA = Nothing
DS = nothing

For Each Row As DataRow In DT.Rows
'Do Something
Next
DT = Nothing

MSDN @ [ADO.Net & Paging Through a Query Result ] Says:

This might not be the best choice for paging through large query results because, although the DataAdapter fills the target DataTable or DataSet with only the requested records, the resources to return the entire query are still used ..
Remember that the database server returns the entire query results even though only one page of records is added to the DataSet.

That is true, At first testing the time results for this method was bad even for closer pages..

To tweak that: I added a top clause in the select query to select Top(PageSize * PageIndex), so if we want the 2nd page where page size is 10: the database returns only 20 records, and the DataSet is filled with the 2nd 10 records.. instead of letting the database to return the entire table. and this tweak makes DataSet timing chart similar to 'Top Clause' SQL paging method [ more on that @ Paging in ASP and ASP.Net]

Tags: ADO.Net , ASP.Net , Paging , performance , VB.Net