Mercea Paul wrote:

> Just wonder, why can't databases keep track internally of the count of
> table rows, so getting the number of rows would be instant.

Because there is no single count. Different transactions can see
significantly different number of records. It means that count would
have to be kept for each transaction/table.

However, this might help you:

http://www.firebirdfaq.org/faq5


--
Milan Babuskov
http://www.flamerobin.org
http://www.guacosoft.com