If you want to sort by any column and paginate on any column (so you can have your cursor), a BTREE (MySQL index) is sort of the wrong structure in the first pl

If you want to sort by any column and paginate on any column (so you can have your cursor), a BTREE (MySQL index) is sort of the wrong structure in the first place. You probably want a document store for something like this. Scylla! More pragmatically, just force bookmarked scans - limit the columns that can be sorted by - use a replica with indexes that the writer doesn’t have - pay for fast disks - use one of the new parallel query engines like Aurora or Vitess - just tell the business people to wait a dang minute, computer is thinking!