Faster alternative in Oracle to SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sometable
If you want just a rough estimate, you can extrapolate from a sample: SELECT COUNT(*) * 100 FROM sometable SAMPLE (1); For greater speed (but lower accuracy) you can reduce the sample size: SELECT COUNT(*) * 1000 FROM sometable SAMPLE (0.1); For even greater speed (but even worse accuracy) you can use block-wise sampling: SELECT … Read more