Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

When API enumerates through the list of pages in a given category, it needs a way to resume the query. Sortkey provides a good point from which to continue, but has one drawback - more than one page may have identical one, which may lead to the following bug scenario:

Assuming there are 20 pages in a category, and page 10 and 11 both have identical sortkey, the user's query may request go 10 pages at a time. The sortkey to continue from would be the value of #11, but since it is the same as #10, #10 will be returned twice - in both the first and second resultset. This might even result in an infinite loop - requesting one item at a time would reach #10 and never advance to #11.

Solution:  sort by sortkey + cl_from, and store both the sortkey and cl_from as the starting point.

To optimize query execution, cl_sortkey needs to be modified by adding cl_from at the end:

ALTER TABLE `wikidb`.`categorylinks` DROP INDEX `cl_sortkey`,
 ADD INDEX `cl_sortkey` USING BTREE(`cl_to`, `cl_sortkey`, `cl_from`)
, ENGINE = MyISAM;