Hello guys,
I often find these three variants:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM Foo;
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM Foo;
SELECT COUNT(PrimaryKey) FROM Foo;
As far as I can see, they all do the same thing, and I find myself using the three in my codebase. However, I don't like to do the same thing different ways. To which one should I stick? Is any one of them better than the two others?
This will depend on the type of database you are using as well as the type of table in some cases.
For example, using MySQL, count(*) will be fast under a MyISAM table but slow under an InnoDB. Under InnoDB you should use count(1) or count(pk).
At least on Oracle they are all the same: http://www.oracledba.co.uk/tips/count_speed.htm
COUNT(*) and COUNT(1) are actually subtley different (though they do the same thing)
COUNT(*) is the cardinality of the table (i.e. the number of rows) and COUNT(exp) is the count of the non-NULL occurrences of the expression, which happens to be a constant in this case.
I prefer COUNT(*)
Two of them always produce the same answer:
Assuming the 'pk' is a primary key and that no nulls are allowed in the values, then
However, if 'pk' is not constrained to be not null, then it produces a different answer:
COUNT(possibly_null) counts the number of rows with non-null values in the column possibly_null.
COUNT(DISTINCT pk) also counts the number of rows (because a primary key does not allow duplicates).
COUNT(DISTINCT possibly_null_or_dup) counts the number of distinct non-null values in the column possibly_null_or_dup.
COUNT(DISTINCT possibly_duplicated) counts the number of distinct (necessarily non-null) values in the column possibly_duplicated when that has the NOT NULL clause on it.
Normally, I write COUNT(*); it is the original recommended notation for SQL. Similarly, with the EXISTS clause, I normally write WHERE EXISTS(SELECT * FROM ...) because that was the original recommend notation. There should be no benefit to the alternatives; the optimizer should see through the more obscure notations.
Use * for all your queries that need to count everything, even for joins, use *
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.*)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
But don't use COUNT(*) for joins, as that will return 1 even if the subordinate table doesn't match anything from parent table
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(*)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
Don't be fooled by those advising that when using * in COUNT, it fetches entire row from your table, saying that * is slow. The * on SELECT COUNT(*) and SELECT * has no bearing to each other, they are entirely different thing, they just share a common token, i.e. *. In fact, if it is not permitted to name a field as same as its table name, RDBMS language designer could give COUNT(tableNameHere) the same semantics as COUNT(*). Example:
For counting rows we could have this:
SELECT COUNT(emp) FROM emp
And they could make it simpler:
SELECT COUNT() FROM emp
And for LEFT JOINs, we could have this:
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
But they cannot do that (COUNT(tableNameHere)) since SQL standard permits naming a field with the same name as its table name:
CREATE TABLE fruit -- ORM-friendly name
(
fruit_id int NOT NULL,
fruit varchar(50), /* same name as table name,
and let's say, someone forgot to put NOT NULL */
shape varchar(50) NOT NULL,
color varchar(50) NOT NULL
)
And also, it is not a good practice to make a field nullable, say you have values 'Banana', 'Apple', NULL, 'Pears' on fruit field. This will not count all fruits, it will only yield 3, not 4
SELECT count(fruit) FROM fruit
Though some RDBMS do that sort of principle(for counting the table's rows, it accepts table name as COUNT's parameter), this will work in Postgresql (if there is no subordinate field in any of the two tables below, i.e. as long as there is no name conflict between field name and table name):
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
But that could cause confusion later if we will add a subordinate field in the table, as it will count the field(which could be nullable), not the table rows.
So to be on the safe side, use:
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.*)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
[EDIT]
In particular to COUNT(1), it is a one-trick pony, it works well only on one table query:
SELECT COUNT(1) FROM tbl
But when you use joins, that trick won't work on multi-table queries without its semantics being confused, and in particular you cannot write:
-- count the subordinates that belongs to boss
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.1)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
So what's the meaning of COUNT(1) here?
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(1)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
Is it this...?
-- counting all the subordinates only
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.boss_id)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
Or this...?
-- or is that COUNT(1) will also count 1 for boss regardless if boss has a subordinate
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(*)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
Though it isn't hard to infer (though some could be confused) that COUNT(1) is the same as COUNT(*) regardless of type of join. But for LEFT JOINs result, we cannot mold COUNT(1) to work as: COUNT(subordinate.boss_id), COUNT(subordinate.*)
So just use either of the following:
-- count the subordinates that belongs to boss
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.boss_id)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
-- count the subordinates that belongs to boss
SELECT boss.boss_id, COUNT(subordinate.*)
FROM boss
LEFT JOIN subordinate on subordinate.boss_id = boss.boss_id
GROUP BY boss.id
Use either COUNT(field) or COUNT(*), and stick with it consistently. In short, don't use COUNT(1) for anything
I feel the performance charecteristics changes from DBMS to DBMS. Its all on how they choose to implment it. Since I have worked extensively on oracle, Ill tell from that perspective.
COUNT(*) - Fetches entire row into result set befor passing on to the count function, count function will aggregate 1 if the row is not null
COUNT(1) - Will not fetch any row, instead count is called with a constant value 1 for each row in the table when the where matches.
Count(PK) - PK's in oracle is indexed. This means Oracle has to read only the index. Normally one row in Index B+ Tree is many times smaller than the actual row. So considering the disk IOPS rate, Oracle can fetch many times more rows from Index with a single block transfer as compared to entire row. This leads to higher througput of the query.
From this you can see the first count is the slowest and the last count is the fastest in Oracle.
As it is obvious Jonathan Leffler told the complete story. but in similarcases Irecommand to use SQL Profiler and check whats happening.
There you can find your answer.
Books on line says "COUNT ( { [ [ ALL | DISTINCT ] expression ] | * } )"
"1" is a non-null expression so it's the same as COUNT(*).
The optimiser recognises it as trivial so gives the same plan. A PK is unique and non-null (in SQL Server at least) so COUNT(PK) = COUNT(*)
This is a similar myth to EXISTS (SELECT * ... or EXISTS (SELECT 1 ...
And see the ANSI 92 spec, section 6.5, General Rules, case 1
a) If COUNT(*) is specified, then the result is the cardinality
of T.
b) Otherwise, let TX be the single-column table that is the
result of applying the <value expression> to each row of T
and eliminating null values. If one or more null values are
eliminated, then a completion condition is raised: warning-
null value eliminated in set function.