I am working on an HTTP Server in Delphi which simply sends back a custom XML dataset. I am not following any type of standard formatting, such as SOAP. I have the system working seamlessly, except one small flaw: When I have a very large dataset to send back to the client, it might take up to 2 minutes for all the data to be transferred. The HTTP Server I'm building is essentially an XML Data based API around a database, implementing the common business rule - therefore, the requests are specific to the data behind the system.

When, for example, I fetch a large set of product data, I would like to break this down and send it back piece by piece. However, a single HTTP request calls for a single response. I can't necessarily keep feeding the client with multiple different XML packets unless the client explicitly requests it.

I don't have any session management, but rather an API Key. I know if I had sessions, I could keep-alive a dataset temporarily for a client, and they could request bits and pieces of it. However, without session management, I would have to execute the SQL query multiple times (for each chunk of data), and in the mean-time, if that data changes, the "pages" might get messed up, therefore causing items to show on the wrong pages, after navigating to a different page.

So how is this commonly handled? What's the methodology behind breaking down a large XML dataset into chunks to save the load?