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I'm aware of the advantages and disadvantages of paginating table results, but I'm not sure what would be best in this particular case:

I have a table that can have between 0 and 1000 rows (sometimes more), and is constantly being updated from the server with new entries. Each row has about 10 columns, and each column can be used as a 'filter' (clicking on the label re-arranges rows ascending / descending according to that parameter).

My user will be constantly looking at this list, filtering and re-ordening rows in order to find entries. As there could be a huge number of results, I thought of two possibilities:

  • Paginating the results. Problem: If the table is constantly being updated, how do I keep it from moving elements up and down, and how do I keep the pagination consistent?

  • Never-ending scrolling. Problem: In most cases I would assume that, given enough filtering parameters, the user won't have to scroll down that much, so the desired result is probably in the top. But I can think of scenarios where the user might want to look for a result that, he knows, is roughly in the middle of the list (suppose he's ordering by date, or in my case by a Document Type).

Is there a third alternative for paginating tables that are constantly being updated?

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My user will be constantly looking at this list, filtering and re-ordening rows in order to find entries.

Specific record detection is a very heavy cognitive-loaded and monotonious work for a user. This could lead to errors and fast user fatique.

It's better let the system detects such records based on some logic rules.

So the better way is to develop the rule creation interface which lets to create set of rules. Then the rules is applied to the data and system automatically detects and displays only needed entries.

Don't forget, machine should work, human should think.

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1000+ rows say you decide to keep 20 rows a page that makes it 50 pages, I doubt that any user would want to or will go through all 50 pages using your pager to get to the entry that he wants to see,

Better you have 2 things

1 - A search box, where the user can search and reach to the entry he wants to

2 - A time stamp with an update button, timestamp will have the last date time the data was fetched and the update button will fetch all the new data and populate it in the grid.

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