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.