Understand the differences between offset-based and cursor-based pagination and when to use each, especially when dealing with frequently changing datasets.
api / pagination / rest / offset / cursor / data consistency / web development
LIMIT caps returned rows; OFFSET skips rows in the query result. SQL does not require ORDER BY syntactically, but repeatable page boundaries need a unique ordering. For an API, choose between page-number navigation and continuation from the last key; neither strategy alone provides a snapshot. Measure deeper pages before setting a performance cutoff.
PostgreSQL / database pagination / LIMIT / OFFSET / cursor-based pagination / query performance