There aren't a general solution. If you realy need the exact count of
tuples than you can play with a TRIGGER and increase/decrease the
tuple-count for this table in an extra table.
Of course, this means accepting the cost of obtaining update locks on
the count table.
The original poster should understand that they can either get a fast
estimated count, or they can get a slow accurate count (either slow in
terms of select using count(*) or slow in terms of updates using
triggers and locking).
Other systems have their own issues. An index scan may be faster than a
table scan for databases that can accurately determine counts using only
the index, but it's still a relatively slow operation, and people don't
normally need an accurate count for records in the range of 100,000+? :-)
Cheers,
mark
--
Mark Mielke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
