Yes, I understand that, but it would still be
useful to know the tota number of records in a table without having to do
a count.

RBS

> 2008/9/30 <bartsmissaert@...>:
>>> There is no way to know about
>>> row number efficiently.
>>
>> Just wonder, why can't databases keep track internally of the count of
>> table rows, so getting the number of rows would be instant.
>> Of course there would be some overhead in doing that, but I can't
>> imagine
>> it is much.
>
> You don't fetch tables in SQL, but you fetch records from a
> select-statement. It's not necessarily (and not even commonly) a
> single table you're fetching and it's impossible for the server to
> keep track of the result-set before it knows how and what it is going
> to fetch.
>
> --
> eat(this); // delicious suicide
>