The present invention provides a system and a method for materializing records in a result set in response to a query. The computer system comprises a server and a client. The server has a database and a database management system for providing access to the database. The client is operatively coupled to the database management system. The client is adapted to provide a query to the database management system and the database management system is adapted to materialize a number of records in a result set in response to the query. The number of materialized records is selected to reduce inefficient materialization of records from the database in response to the query.