In a storage area network (SAN) management application, large data sets tend to produce unwieldy results upon display attempts. A mechanism for gathering and organizing a large data set into an ordered set of output display entries which does not require main memory storage for the entire large data set, generates a displayable portion without excessive memory consumption. Configurations employ a multiple pass gathering and organization operation. An output criteria specifies a key field and identifies a range of entries by specifying a particular screen for display from among the full range of screens. A parser retrieves and identifies the entries, during a first pass, using only the key field and an index for each of the entries in the large data set, to avoid loading all fields of each entry in entirety. A second pass fetches entries only for the identified entries corresponding to the output criteria.