Limiting And Using The TOP Operator

Hi,





please do help. Have been wrestling with this for about 3 hours and read a buncha forums + searched the tutorial lists.. AARRGH!





Anyhow,





I have to paginate a datalist (and I really can't use a datagrid because of the layout, blame the bluddy graphic designer)





I want to return the top 8 rows, the next 8 top rows and so on.





This is the sql string I have:


'retrieve pagination in order to construct the rest of the sql string


Dim startrec As Integer


If pageno = 1 Then


startrec = 0


Else


startrec = (pageno - 1) * pagesize


End If


' this builds the sql string, getting ONLY the records we need for this. Page size is a constant expressed on the base page


' startrec is the record where I want to start in the db.


strsql = "select top " & pagesize & " * " & strsqlbasic & " and itemID>" & startrec & " order by itemnotes1 asc"


noresults.text = strsql & " <br> " & searchwhat & searchfor





strsqlbasic is constructed elsewhere and is just the 'from X where y = var





Of course, this returns all records where the value of itemID is greater than the value of startrec. How would I change this so it returns the next 4 rows starting from the row number given by the value of startrec?





thanks for any help.