--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "laurenz_brein" wrote:

> Every now and then you will have to "reorganize" the counter table,
> summing up all the +1 and -1 values, else the performance will
> become as bad as that of the 'select count(*)'.
> If you do not lock out all other transactions while you do that,
> you might end up with wrong counts.
> It is an additional maintenance task.

And unless you know in advance which counts are likely to be used
(where clauses etc.), the count table may be irrelevant. It all
depends on your situation. If you're only interested in an approximate
count of records in one or more tables, there is even another solution
that Ivan wrote a couple of months back, and that impressed me:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird-support/message/61513

Set