Doug:

> Of course, it "could" be done. Anything can
> be done. But at what cost?

Shouldn't be too expensive in terms of man or woman-hours.

> Are count(*) operations that frequent or that critical
> or that sub-optimal that a special case needs to be
> added to the engine to optimize them?

Yes.

BTW might this not facilitate displaying nice, correct,
proportional scroll bars? This basic, essential UI element
seems still not to be supported by most C/S set-ups - or
is it just IBO?



Cheers,
Tobias