[MasonOfWords]

In OData, these problems are solved by:

* Client communicate their desired projection and page size (via $select and $top query string parameters), which can then easily be mapped by the service into efficient calls to the underlying data store.

* OData client page sizes are polite requests, not demands. The server is free to apply its own paging limits, which are then communicated back to the client along with the total results count and a URL that can be followed to get the next page of results. Clients are required to accept and process the page of entities they are given, even if that number differs from the count which was requested due to server limits.

I'd assume GraphQL will adopt similar functionality, if it hasn't already.