Craig James wrote:
>
> My question is: What do the other databases do that Postgres can't do,
> and why not?
>
> Count() on Oracle and MySQL is almost instantaneous, even for very
> large tables. So why can't Postgres do what they do?
>
I think Mysql can only do that for the myisam engine - innodb and
falcon are similar to Postgres.
I don't believe Oracle optimizes bare count(*) on a table either - tho
it may be able to use a suitable index (if present) to get the answer
quicker.
regards
Mark