In Sql, What's the Difference Between Count(Column) and Count(*)

count(*) vs count(column-name) - which is more correct?

  • COUNT(*) counts all rows
  • COUNT(column) counts non-NULLs only
  • COUNT(1) is the same as COUNT(*) because 1 is a non-null expressions

Your use of COUNT(*) or COUNT(column) should be based on the desired output only.

In SQL, what's the difference between count(column) and count(*)?

count(*) counts NULLs and count(column) does not

[edit] added this code so that people can run it

create table #bla(id int,id2 int)
insert #bla values(null,null)
insert #bla values(1,null)
insert #bla values(null,1)
insert #bla values(1,null)
insert #bla values(null,1)
insert #bla values(1,null)
insert #bla values(null,null)

select count(*),count(id),count(id2)
from #bla

results
7 3 2

What is the difference between count (*) and count(attribute_name)?

Imagine this table:

Sample Image


select Count(TelephoneNumber) from Calls -- returns 3
select Count(*) from Calls -- returns 4

count(column_name) also counts duplicate values. Consider:

Sample Image

select Count(TelephoneNumber) from Calls -- returns 4

In SQL is there a difference between count(*) and count( fieldname )

Count(*) counts all records, including nulls, whereas Count(fieldname) does not include nulls.

What is the difference between COUNT(*) and COUNT(table.ColumnName)?

The difference between these two is not (primarily) performance. They count different things:

COUNT(*) counts the rows in your table.

COUNT(column) counts the entries in a column - ignoring null values.

Of course there will be performance differences between these two, but that is to be expected if they are doing different things. Especially when the column allows null-values, the query will take longer than on a column that does not (or COUNT(*)).

count(*) and count(column_name), what's the diff?

  • COUNT(*) counts all rows in the result set (or group if using GROUP BY).
  • COUNT(column_name) only counts those rows where column_name is NOT NULL. This may be slower in some situations even if there are no NULL values because the value has to be checked (unless the column is not nullable).
  • COUNT(1) is the same as COUNT(*) since 1 can never be NULL.

To see the difference in the results you can try this little experiment:

CREATE TABLE table1 (x INT NULL);
INSERT INTO table1 (x) VALUES (1), (2), (NULL);
SELECT
COUNT(*) AS a,
COUNT(x) AS b,
COUNT(1) AS c
FROM table1;

Result:


a b c
3 2 3

difference between count(*) and count(columnName)

There's at least one difference.

  • They may return different results if email can contain NULL.

For more information, see this article.

In SQL, what’s the difference between count(*) and count('x')?

To say that SELECT COUNT(*) vs COUNT(1) results in your DBMS returning "columns" is pure bunk. That may have been the case long, long ago but any self-respecting query optimizer will choose some fast method to count the rows in the table - there is NO performance difference between SELECT COUNT(*), COUNT(1), COUNT('this is a silly conversation')

Moreover, SELECT(1) vs SELECT(*) will NOT have any difference in INDEX usage -- most DBMS will actually optimize SELECT( n ) into SELECT(*) anyway. See the ASK TOM: Oracle has been optimizing SELECT(n) into SELECT(*) for the better part of a decade, if not longer:
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:1156151916789

problem is in count(col) to count()
conversion
**03/23/00 05:46 pm *** one workaround is to set event 10122 to
turn off count(col) ->count()
optimization. Another work around is
to change the count(col) to count(
),
it means the same, when the col has a
NOT NULL constraint. The bug number is
1215372.

One thing to note - if you are using COUNT(col) (don't!) and col is marked NULL, then it will actually have to count the number of occurrences in the table (either via index scan, histogram, etc. if they exist, or a full table scan otherwise).

Bottom line: if what you want is the count of rows in a table, use COUNT(*)



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