"Position To:" Design Challenge with SQL

All,

I'm interested if anyone has worked on a design to enable "position to"
type of web searches. Any insight or gotchas would be appreciated. We
have a series of requirements that require a web search but with the
ability to scroll up or down from that key value position. I know RPG does
this but we need an SQL based solution.

To further explain the need...Assume you have a database table of all
people living in the US. We want to be able to search based on a number of
criteria such as "state". So I search for "MINNESOTA" and I'm presented
with a list/subfile of people living in MN. Example SQL: SELECT * FROM
US_PEOPLE where STATE = "MN" order by STATE, LASTNAME

Now they want to "scroll up" in the list which should then display people
in "MICHIGAN" . The issue is "MICHIGAN" is not in my result set. If I
scrolled down thru MN then I would see "Mississippi".

We are dealing with large tables so we need to make the searches perform.
We also obviously are looking for a "generic" design so it can be used for
numerous inquiry applications... Anyone have experience?

Thanks in advance, Paul Holm


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