Should I COUNT(*) or not?

Question

I know it\'s generally a bad idea to do queries like this:

SELECT * FROM `group_relations`

But when I just want the count, should I go for this

Answer 1

if you try SELECT COUNT(1) FROMgroup_relations it will be a bit faster because it will not try to retrieve information from your columns.

Edit: I just did some research and found out that this only happens in some db. In sqlserver it's the same to use 1 or *, but on oracle it's faster to use 1.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/transactsql/thread/9367c580-087a-4fc1-bf88-91a51a4ee018/

Apparently there is no difference between them in mysql, like sqlserver the parser appears to change the query to select(1). Sorry if I mislead you in some way.