Re: count(*) slow on large tables

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003, Christopher Browne wrote:

> I can't imagine why the raw number of tuples in a relation would be
> expected to necessarily be terribly useful.
>

We use stuff like that for reporting queries.

example:
On our message boards each post is a row. The powers that be like to know
how many posts there are total (In addition to 'today')-
select count(*) from posts is how it has been
done on our informix db. With our port to PG I instead select reltuples
pg_class.

I know when I login to a new db (or unknown to me db) the first thing I do
is look at tables and see what sort of data there is.. but in code I'd
rarely do that.

I know some monitoring things around here also do a select count(*) on
sometable to ensure it is growing, but like you said, this is easily done
with the number of pages as well.

yes. Informix caches this data. I believe Oracle does too.

Mysql with InnoDB does the same thing PG does. (MyISAM caches it)

--
Jeff Trout <jeff(at)jefftrout(dot)com>
http://www.jefftrout.com/
http://www.stuarthamm.net/