The first method allows you to pass an `org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable` instance to the query method to dynamically add paging to your statically defined query. A `Page` knows about the total number of elements and pages available. It does so by the infrastructure triggering a count query to calculate the overall number. As this might be expensive depending on the store used, `Slice` can be used as return instead. A `Slice` only knows about whether there's a next `Slice` available which might be just sufficient when walking thought a larger result set.
The first method allows you to pass an `org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable` instance to the query method to dynamically add paging to your statically defined query. A `Page` knows about the total number of elements and pages available. It does so by the infrastructure triggering a count query to calculate the overall number. As this might be expensive depending on the store used, `Slice` can be used as return instead. A `Slice` only knows about whether there's a next `Slice` available which might be just sufficient when walking through a larger result set.
Sorting options are handled through the `Pageable` instance too. If you only need sorting, simply add an `org.springframework.data.domain.Sort` parameter to your method. As you also can see, simply returning a `List` is possible as well. In this case the additional metadata required to build the actual `Page` instance will not be created (which in turn means that the additional count query that would have been necessary not being issued) but rather simply restricts the query to look up only the given range of entities.
Oliver Gierke
9 years ago