On 1/13/05 6:44 PM, "Greg Stark" <gsstark@xxxxxxx> wrote: > That's simply false. Oracle does indeed have to count the records one by one. > > It doesn't have to read and ignore the dead records since they're in a > separate place (but on the other hand it sometimes have to go read that > separate place when it sees records that were committed after your > transaction). > > It can also do index-only scans, which often helps, but it's still not > instantaneous. Ok, I stand corrected - I was given some wrong information. However, my experience has been that count(*) on Oracle is a whole lot faster than PostgreSQL - what appeared instantaneous on Oracle took some time on PostgreSQL. That was one of the first things I noticed when moving a database application to PostgreSQL. I've since disposed of the Oracle database, so can't go back and retest. Wes ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings
