Here’s our table structure:

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.tables WHERE name = 'users')
BEGIN
  DROP TABLE [users];
END;

CREATE TABLE [users] (
  [user_id] INT PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY(1,1),
  username VARCHAR(16),
  [password] VARCHAR(16),
  email VARCHAR(128)
);

Here is a changeUserName procedure to update a user’s username, using an OUTPUT clause:

CREATE PROC changeUserName
  @user_ip varchar(15),
  @password varchar(16),
  @username_old varchar(16),
  @username_new varchar(16)
AS

  SET NOCOUNT ON;

  CREATE TABLE #updatedUser(
    user_id INT,
    username_old VARCHAR(16),
    username_new VARCHAR(16));

  UPDATE [users]
    SET [username] = @username_new
  OUTPUT DELETED.user_id, DELETED.username, INSERTED.username
    INTO #updatedUser(user_id, username_old, username_new)
  WHERE [users].username = @username_old
    AND CAST([users].[password] AS VARBINARY(16))
      = CAST(@password AS VARBINARY(16));

  SET NOCOUNT OFF;

  SELECT user_id, username_old, username_new
    FROM #updatedUser;

  DROP TABLE #updatedUser;

Here is an example of that procedure in action:

EXEC [addUser] @user_ip = '192.168.1.2',
  @username = 'john',
  @password = 'john!password',
  @email = 'john@yahoo.com';

user_id
-----------
1

EXEC [changeUserName]
  @user_ip = '192.168.1.1',
  @username_old = 'john',
  @username_new = 'john_new',
  @password='john!password';

user_id     old_username     new_username
------- ---------------- ----------------
1           john         john_new

Let’s setup our table structure first:

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.tables WHERE name = 'users')
BEGIN
  DROP TABLE [users];
END;

CREATE TABLE [users] (
  [user_id] INT PRIMARY KEY IDENTITY(1,1),
  username VARCHAR(16),
  [password] VARCHAR(16),
  email VARCHAR(128)
);

IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM sys.tables WHERE name = 'login_activity')
BEGIN
  DROP TABLE [login_activity];
END;

CREATE TABLE [login_activity] (
  user_id INT,
  user_ip VARCHAR(15),
  login_username VARCHAR(16),
  login_success BIT,
  login_time DATETIME
);

Let’s assume we want an addUser procedure to create a user, log in said user, and return the new user’s user_id. Here is how we could do that with the OUTPUT clause:

CREATE PROC addUser
  @user_ip VARCHAR(15),
  @username VARCHAR(16),
  @password VARCHAR(16),
  @email VARCHAR(128)
AS

SET NOCOUNT ON;

CREATE TABLE #new_user(user_id INT);

INSERT INTO users (username, [password], email)
OUTPUT inserted.[user_id] INTO #new_user(user_id)
VALUES (@username, @password, @email);

INSERT INTO login_activity(user_id, login_ip, login_username,
  login_success, login_time)
SELECT user_id, @username, @user_ip, 1, CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
FROM #new_user;

SET NOCOUNT OFF;

SELECT user_id
FROM new_user;

EXEC [addUser] @user_ip = '192.168.1.1',
  @username = 'bob',
  @password = 'bob!password',
  @email = 'bob@gmail.com';

user_id
-----------
1

EXEC [addUser] @user_ip = '192.168.1.2',
  @username = 'john',
  @password = 'john!password',
  @email = 'john@yahoo.com';

user_id
-----------
2

For reference, here are the CREATE and INSERT statements for the [users] table used in this example.

CREATE TABLE [users] (
  user_id INT PRIMARY KEY,
  username VARCHAR(16),
  password VARCHAR(16),
  email VARCHAR(128)
);

INSERT INTO [users] (user_id, username, password, email)
SELECT 1, 'bob', 'bob!password', 'bob@gmail.com'
UNION ALL
SELECT 2, 'john', 'john!password', 'john@yahoo.com'
UNION ALL
SELECT 3, 'kim', 'kim!password', 'kim@msn.com'
UNION ALL
SELECT 4, 'rachel', 'rachel!password', 'rachel@aol.com'
UNION ALL
SELECT 5, 'frank', 'frank!password', 'frank@email.com';

Now, let’s create a stored procedure to search our [users] table. It takes three paramaters. The @email paramater is a full or partial e-mail to search. @page is the page to be displayed, and @per_page is the number of results per page.

CREATE PROC searchUsersByEmail
  @email VARCHAR(128),
  @page SMALLINT,
  @per_page SMALLINT
AS

SET @last_page = (@nbr_results - 1) / @per_page + 1;

SELECT
  @nbr_results = COUNT(*)
FROM [users] AS u
WHERE u.email LIKE '%' + @email + '%';

SET @last_page = @nbr_results / @per_page; 

IF (@page = 1)
BEGIN
  -- Special first page case:
  SELECT TOP (@per_page)
    u.user_id,
    u.username,
    u.email
  FROM [users] AS u
  WHERE u.email LIKE '%' + @email + '%'
  ORDER BY u.email ASC;
END;
ELSE IF (@page = @last_page)
BEGIN
  -- Special last page case:
  SELECT s0.*
  FROM (
    SELECT TOP (@nbr_results - (@last_page - 1) * @per_page)
      u.user_id,
      u.username,
      u.email
    FROM [users] AS u
    WHERE u.email LIKE '%' + @email + '%'
    ORDER BY u.email DESC
  ) AS s0
  ORDER BY s0.email ASC;
END;
ELSE IF (@page > @last_page)
BEGIN
  -- Error / Empty set case, replace with error if desired.
  SELECT
    u.user_id,
    u.username,
    u.email
  FROM [users] AS u
  WHERE 1 = 0;
END;
ELSE
BEGIN
  -- All other cases:
  SELECT s1.*
  FROM (
    SELECT TOP (@per_page) s0.*
    FROM (
      SELECT TOP (@page * @per_page)
        u.user_id,
        u.username,
        u.email
      FROM [users] AS u
      WHERE u.email LIKE '%' + @email + '%'
      ORDER BY u.email ASC
    ) AS s0
    ORDER BY s0.email DESC
  ) AS s1
  ORDER BY s1.email ASC;
END;

Now let’s test our search procedure by searching for all e-mails with “.com”:

[searchUsersByEmail] @email = '.com', @page = 1, @per_page = 3;

user_id     username email
----------- -------- ----------------
1           bob      bob@gmail.com
5           frank    frank@email.com
2           john     john@yahoo.com

[searchUsersByEmail] @email = '.com', @page = 2, @per_page = 3;

user_id     username email
----------- -------- ----------------
3           kim      kim@msn.com
4           rachel   rachel@aol.com

That’s it. Now you have a functional procedure in MS SQL as an alternative to MySQL’s LIMIT x OFFSET y clause.

They recently reversed their decision, and claim no new plans to depreciate this provider. However, the link is slightly hidden. Here it is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=000364db-5e8b-44a8-b9be-ca44d18b059b&displaylang=en