Andy,

The goal of the original procedure was to present a list (or browse as I call it) of certain columns that can be sorted by any of the columns, and be able to page through the records without returning the entire recordset at once.

There are several things wrong with your alternative. One (easy to fix) is that it will not work with @BatchesToSkip=0 (the default) since TOP 0 will return nothing.

But more importantly is that it will not work when ordering by any column other than those that "happen" to be in orderid order, such as the orderdate column you're using by default. The solution to this problem is made more difficult when you attempt to order by a column like ShipName where there could be duplicates within that column, and even worse yet if the column you're ordering by could contain nulls. When you consider all of these possibilities and all the intricate code needed to handle them (I know, I've done it), the cursor approach starts looking like the better solution - for the intended goal as I stated to begin with.

Jay Madren