let me explain my problem, hope you get an idea of what it is.
I have a web service which hide from public access, and have designed a secure way of mysql sql querying using to the service across the websites. so i dont think i can really use the current model layer of Yii2, and that also means i hardly can use cActivedata as no database present.
Currently what i do is to write raw sqls and get all the results and then feed into dataprovider using ArrayDataProvider.
e.g.
        $sql="select * from a_table";
        $result=$remote->select($sql);
        $dataProvider = new ArrayDataProvider([
            'allModels' => $result,
            'sort' => [
                'attributes' => ['date', 'name'],
            ],
            'pagination' => [
                'pageSize' => 10,
            ],
        ]);
        return $this->render('index', [
            'dataProvider' => $dataProvider,
        ]);
that pose a problem, everytime i need to query the full table. This is not idea if the table is very large. It is better to query in the size of 10 something, however if i do
        $sql="select * from a_table LIMIT 10";
no pagination will appear in my case…How do i solve this problem? And if this is not an idea way to talk to external data services, what is ur suggestion?