From: "Paul Reeves" <paul@...>

> Not necessarily. Count has to literally count all the records. It has to

do

> this because the engine cannot tell which records are visible to the

current

> transaction without actually visiting each of them. It will be quicker

than

> actually fetching all the records counted, but it might not feel like it.

This

> is one of the few downsides of the MGA.

So far, even counting thousands of records happens in seconds so while doing
a report, a few extra seconds isn't really a big deal and no one should
notice it.

>
> That said, why do you need to do a count? What are you counting? The total
> rows in the table, or a subset? Do you know in advance what questions you

are

> going to ask? And how many users are involved in updating the database?

If you want to show an accurate progression while printing reports, you need
to have an accurate count of the number of records being printed.

Woody