Pagination Optimization

Three pagination strategies with fundamentally different performance characteristics and API contracts. The choice is irreversible once clients depend on it — pick correctly upfront.

Phase 1: Discovery

Establish before recommending anything:

What does the sort order depend on?

• Stable unique column (created_at + id, auto-increment id) → keyset is viable
• Arbitrary user-defined sort (price, name, relevance score) → keyset is harder; offset may be necessary with mitigation
• Relevance/ranking from full-text search → offset only; keyset doesn't compose with score-based ranking