Re: aggregate functions, COUNT

On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Kevin Way wrote:

> I'm currently using a SELECT count(*) when all I really want to know is
> if 1 or more records exist. Is there a standard way to just find out if
> a record exists? If not, is there a way to avoid iterating over all the
> records by writing an aggregate function? Given what I've read of how
> they work, I don't see how to make the function return before parsing
> all the results anyway, am I wrong here?

I think you could use EXISTS for that,
select EXISTS (<query>); should give a true/false on whether the
query returned any rows. I'm not sure if it stops after one row
or not, but if it doesn't you can add a limit 1 to the query.