Need a row count after SELECT statement: what's the optimal SQL approach?

Question

I\'m trying to select a column from a single table (no joins) and I need the count of the number of rows, ideally before I begin retrieving the rows. I have come to two app

Answer 1

If you're concerned the number of rows that meet the condition may change in the few milliseconds since execution of the query and retrieval of results, you could/should execute the queries inside a transaction:

BEGIN TRAN bogus

SELECT COUNT( my_table.my_col ) AS row_count
FROM my_table
WHERE my_table.foo = 'bar'

SELECT my_table.my_col
FROM my_table
WHERE my_table.foo = 'bar'
ROLLBACK TRAN bogus

This would return the correct values, always.

Furthermore, if you're using SQL Server, you can use @@ROWCOUNT to get the number of rows affected by last statement, and redirect the output of real query to a temp table or table variable, so you can return everything altogether, and no need of a transaction:

DECLARE @dummy INT

SELECT my_table.my_col
INTO #temp_table
FROM my_table
WHERE my_table.foo = 'bar'

SET @dummy=@@ROWCOUNT
SELECT @dummy, * FROM #temp_table