Or more specifically, why do all the data table controls in RichFaces ask for all the rows at once?

I want to create a nice, simple thing: A simple data table view with a page control at top. When the user clicks on a page control, a request happens to fetch exactly 25 rows at a certain position.

I tried the scrollableDatatable, but it breaks my table design by ignoring breakBefore.

I've tried all sorts of variation of the extended table data models, but the walk() gets called with firstRow = 0, rowCount = -1.

Short of writing my own paging control, how do I implement true database paging in RichFaces?