Page large result sets with QueryExpression

In Microsoft Dataverse, you can use the paging cookie feature to make paging in an application faster for large datasets. The feature is available in both FetchXML and QueryExpression queries. When you use the paging cookie feature when querying a set of table rows (records), the result contains a value for the paging cookie. To improve system performance, you can then pass that value when you retrieve the next set of rows.

QueryExpression and FetchXML use different formats for their paging cookies. If you convert from one query format to the other by using the QueryExpressionToFetchXmlRequest message or the FetchXmlToQueryExpressionRequest message, the paging cookie value is ignored. In addition, if you request nonconsecutive pages, the paging cookie value is ignored.

Using a paging cookie with QueryExpression

The following example shows how to use the paging cookie with a query expression. For the complete sample code, see Sample: Use QueryExpression with a paging cookie.

// Query using the paging cookie.
// Define the paging attributes.
// The number of records per page to retrieve.
int queryCount = 3;

// Initialize the page number.
int pageNumber = 1;

// Initialize the number of records.
int recordCount = 0;

// Define the condition expression for retrieving records.
ConditionExpression pagecondition = new ConditionExpression();
pagecondition.AttributeName = "parentaccountid";
pagecondition.Operator = ConditionOperator.Equal;
pagecondition.Values.Add(_parentAccountId);

// Define the order expression to retrieve the records.
OrderExpression order = new OrderExpression();
order.AttributeName = "name";
order.OrderType = OrderType.Ascending;

// Create the query expression and add condition.
QueryExpression pagequery = new QueryExpression();
pagequery.EntityName = "account";
pagequery.Criteria.AddCondition(pagecondition);
pagequery.Orders.Add(order);
pagequery.ColumnSet.AddColumns("name", "emailaddress1");                   

// Assign the pageinfo properties to the query expression.
pagequery.PageInfo = new PagingInfo();
pagequery.PageInfo.Count = queryCount;
pagequery.PageInfo.PageNumber = pageNumber;

// The current paging cookie. When retrieving the first page, 
// pagingCookie should be null.
pagequery.PageInfo.PagingCookie = null;
Console.WriteLine("Retrieving sample account records in pages...\n");
Console.WriteLine("#\tAccount Name\t\tEmail Address"); 

while (true)
{
    // Retrieve the page.
    EntityCollection results = _serviceProxy.RetrieveMultiple(pagequery);
    if (results.Entities != null)
    {
        // Retrieve all records from the result set.
        foreach (Account acct in results.Entities)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("{0}.\t{1}\t{2}", ++recordCount, acct.Name,
                               acct.EMailAddress1);
        }
    }

    // Check for more records, if it returns true.
    if (results.MoreRecords)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("\n****************\nPage number {0}\n****************", pagequery.PageInfo.PageNumber);
        Console.WriteLine("#\tAccount Name\t\tEmail Address");

        // Increment the page number to retrieve the next page.
        pagequery.PageInfo.PageNumber++;
        
        // Set the paging cookie to the paging cookie returned from current results.
        pagequery.PageInfo.PagingCookie = results.PagingCookie;
    }
    else
    {
        // If no more records are in the result nodes, exit the loop.
        break;
    }
}

See also

Building queries with QueryExpression
Sample: Use QueryExpression with a paging cookie
Using the QueryExpression class
Page results using FetchXml