Efficiently Accessing Data From a Specific Point in MySQL

• LIMIT: This clause specifies the maximum number of rows to be returned in the query.
• OFFSET: This clause defines the number of rows to skip before starting to retrieve data.

For example, the query:

SELECT * FROM table_name LIMIT 10 OFFSET 5;

will return the first 10 rows after skipping the first 5 rows in the table.

The problem arises when you need to retrieve all rows starting from a specific point without knowing the total number of rows. You can't simply set the OFFSET to a very large number, as it might not be large enough if the dataset keeps growing.

While directly offsetting an infinite number of rows isn't possible, here are some approaches to achieve similar results:

3. Alternative approaches:

   • Depending on your use case, consider alternative methods like pagination, where you retrieve data in fixed-size pages based on user requests.
   • If your table has an auto-incrementing primary key, you can use a WHERE clause to filter rows based on a specific starting ID value.

SET @row_id = starting_id; -- Replace with your starting value

WHILE @row_id IS NOT NULL DO
  SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE id >= @row_id ORDER BY id LIMIT 100;
  -- Process retrieved data here
  SET @row_id = (SELECT id FROM table_name WHERE id > @row_id LIMIT 1);
END WHILE;

This approach retrieves data in batches of 100 rows starting from the starting_id and continues until there are no more rows.