Re: count(*)

Hi Rishi,

Oracle does not keep track of the total number of rows anywhere. When you need to do this, you need to issue a 'select count(*)...'. Note that unless ou are on a very old version of Oracle count(*), count(1), and count(pk_column) will do the same thing.

This is a design issue. You need to re-design your applicaiton to not require that count(*) every 10 minutes. You're right, it's killing you. And, as the tables continue to increase in size, this will NOT scale. You'll reach a point where the amount of time required to execute a count(*) exceeds the amount of time between calls to count(*). When that happens, it's all over. And, actually, even well before that happens, the frequency of the count(*) operation will severely limit your scalability.

Sorry I can't offer any better solutions.

Hope that helps,

-Mark
On Thu, 2002-09-19 at 14:28, Rishi.Jain_at_VerizonWireless.com wrote:
> Hi Gurus,
>
> In one of our insert intensive application we are inserting around 3-4
> million rows / hour. Also this app needs to do a count(*) of the tables
> every 10 minutes for verifying some application based logic. This is really
> killing us and it takes a lot of time.
>
> Can you please guide me to a direction ( built in functions or something
> similar).
>
> Actually this app is being ported from Informix. Informix can somehow keep a
> trak of the count(*) of a table in its header somewhere.
>
> And yes I have tries count(1) , count(indexed_column) etc.
>
>
> Thanks In Advance.
>
> R.h

-- 
--
Mark J. Bobak
Oracle DBA
mark_at_bobak.net
"It is not enough to have a good mind.  The main thing is to use it
well."
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Author: Mark J. Bobak
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