Re: Counting all rows - Mailing list pgsql-sql

From manchicken
Subject Re: Counting all rows
Date
Msg-id 200706231013.32458.manchicken@notsosoft.net
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: Counting all rows  (Andreas Kretschmer <akretschmer@spamfence.net>)
List pgsql-sql
On Saturday 23 June 2007 05:38:56 Andreas Kretschmer wrote:
> Stefan Arentz <stefan.arentz@gmail.com> schrieb:
> > I need to get statistics from a bunch of tables. Simply the number of
> > records in them.
> >
> > The query plan looks like this:
> >
> > => explain select count(id) from stuff;
> >                             QUERY PLAN
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------
> >  Aggregate  (cost=1629.69..1629.70 rows=1 width=8)
> >    ->  Seq Scan on stuff  (cost=0.00..1517.75 rows=44775 width=8)
> >
> > The sequential scan kind of worries me. Is there a better/faster way to
> > do this?
>
> Yes.
>
> A "select count(*) from foo;" enforces a seq. scan. Solutions for this
> are discussed here: http://www.varlena.com/GeneralBits/120.php
>
>
> Andreas

Is there any neat trick for doing this for paging estimates?  It looks like 
the only way to get a result count from a more complex query is to either 
fetch a count first, or to fetch all records and count them in the 
application.

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