Need help on doing paging for php

Dear All,
I have a problem of displaying a large dataset efficeintly. I have read several comments on paging and I understand that there are successful ways of doing paging by using the "paging1.js". However, in the example for paging, I only found the html example. I dont know is there anyway to use the paging for a php program? Like the php program in /php/activewidgets.php ?
So , my question is how to use paging for php program?

thanks a lot a lot!