Oracle 10g Pagination

A colleague of mine alerted me to the following example of pagination in Oracle 10g:

select * from (
    select /*+ FIRST_ROWS(n) */
          a.*
        , ROWNUM rnum
        , count(*) over() as total_rows
    from ( 
        /* your select statement goes here */ 
    ) a
) b 
where b.rnum >= :start_row and b.rnum <= :end_row

This does have the advantage of working with an arbitrary SQL SELECT statement, but there is a somewhat simpler way of going about it if you know in advance what the SELECT statement will be:

SELECT * FROM (
    SELECT your_columns, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY your_sort) AS rnum
         , COUNT(*) OVER() AS total_rows
      FROM your_table
     ORDER BY your_sort
) WHERE rnum >= :start_row AND rnum <= :end_row

The key is that the value of your_sort must be the same in both places.