I have this query:

SELECT count(I.vnd_cod)
FROM items_venda I
JOIN vendas N ON (N.vnd_cod=I.vnd_cod)
JOIN clientes C ON (N.cli_cod=C.cli_cod)
JOIN vendedores V ON (N.ved_cod=V.ved_cod)
WHERE I.pro_cod='1'

I m using it on php, so this code is just for the pagination, the main
query will just select 20 rows, no more than it. but i need a count of
all the rows so i can know how many rows the query returned, and pass
it to my pagination function.

We have a slow server here (P4 2.0ghz 512MB) this query takes about
20+ seconds to return and uses almost 100% of the cpu to do it.

So, is there a way to optmize this count() function?

I m asking it cause currently we have just one company using this
application, but my boss said that almost sold it to another company
that have a lot more data then the current one, so i m beggining to
worry about the performance of some stuff, cause i use this in almost
all reports, this one is the worst in performance, but wating 20
seconds to show up 20 rows is too much!

thanx for any help,

Fábio.