Thx for the help.

I'll try multiple approaches anyway to see what gives the best performance results.

As for the filtering mechanism, I think top50 won't work because when for example...

Thx, that looks like the thing we need.

I still have a question though, since the concept of CTE is fairly new to me (I'm still quite the junior employee)...

I'm affraid it doesn't work either.

In the inner select I can't do the max() yet, and when I use it in the outer select I get the maximum rowcount of...

thx, I'll try that one right away. It would be a lot better than the old solution where we execute the query 2 times, once without limitations and once with.