Selecting from large tables

I'm new to Oracle and I use PHP for my development. I have a few large tables ( a 30+ million rows) and my select will often result in a 1 or 2 million rows and it usually takes 45 seconds.

What I want to do is retrieve only the first 40 rows to display on screen and when user scrolls or click next, retrieve the next 40 rows etc. After all the user may quit after scrolling the first few pages. This will make the user will feel that the query takes sub second.

Is there a proper way of doing this in Oracle?

Yes. It's possible.

If you search "pagination" in asktom.oracle.com web site or in his book, you get very good answer.

Tamil

Thanks. I notice that Tom has several books. Which one talks specifically about pagination? Oracle version 9+