Faster alternative in Oracle to SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sometable

Question

I\'ve notice that in Oracle, the query

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sometable;

is very slow for large tables. It seems like the database it actual

Answer 1

You can have better performance by using the following method:

SELECT COUNT(1) FROM (SELECT /*+FIRST_ROWS*/ column_name 
FROM table_name 
WHERE column_name = 'xxxxx' AND ROWNUM = 1);