On 7 Nov 2001, at 18:11, Ann W. Harrison wrote:

> At 11:53 AM 11/8/2001 +1300, Sandeep wrote:
> > >
> > > Due to the Multi-Generational Architecture of Firebird/IB, a record
> > > count can require a fair bit of processing ...
> >
> >Having a fieldname in count which has index on it gives a better
> >performance than one without index
>
> Are you sure? Do remember that count(*) and count(<field>) are
> not the same. Count(*) returns the number of rows in the table
> while count(<field>) returns the number of rows which have a non-null
> value for <field>. As for the index, though it will help in other
> databases, Firebird and InterBase can not use an index to accellerate
> a count.

I looked at ibconsole's Execution time, and that did show some
difference in both the cases.

Sandeep

Software Developer
CFL
sandeep@...
http://www.cfl.co.nz