Re: SQLPLUS window freezes

Saugato Mukerji wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> a big query like
>
> select count(*) from bigTable;
>
> -- freezes the SQLPLUS window on NT . The table bigTable has 20 million
> rows.
> -- is there a way to abort the query other than killing the SQLPLUS window
> -- from taskmanager.
>
> thanks
>
> Saugato

I seem to remember reading in a book somewhere that if you've got a big table, you can cut down the time of a count by select count(1) from tablename. I seem to remember the idea was that by asking it to return a 1, rather than *, you were cutting down on the buffer space needed. Can anyone confirm, whether select count(*) actually counts the entire row, or whether it returns a * for each row and counts?

MF Received on Fri Jun 23 2000 - 00:00:00 CEST