Increase performance of SELECT * FROM # ORDER BY # ASC LIMIT # OFFSET #;

Question

Basically, I want to do effective and fast lazy loading sorted list on a web page with HSQLDB. My current SQL query ineffective and slow:

SELECT o FROM Human AS o ORDER BY o.firstName ASC LIMIT 500k OFFSET 50;

Could I increase performance of it?

Domain Object:

@RooJpaActiveRecord
public class Human {
    @NotNull
    @Column(name="firstName")
    String firstName;

    @NotNull
    @Column(name="lastName")
    String lastName;
}

SQL table:

Id, firstName, lastName, Version

Answer 1

Add an index on the firstName column and you are ready to go (if you are gonna sort only/first by firstName). Of course this depends on your database. For MySQL see this page.