4
Take the following "Nodes" table, where 'nodes' are user-contributed content:
6
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
7
|NodeID |ContributionDate |NodeSize |NodePopularity |UserName |
8
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
9
|1 |12/22/2010 |160 |2 |Smith |
10
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
11
|2 |08/10/2010 |190 |2 |Johnson |
12
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
13
|3 |07/13/2010 |500 |5 |Baldwin |
14
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
15
|4 |07/15/2010 |420 |2 |Smith |
16
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
17
|5 |12/22/2010 |1000 |4 |Wood |
18
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
19
|6 |10/2/2010 |820 |4 |Smith |
20
+--------+-------------------+------------+----------------+-------------------+
22
The SQL COUNT function returns the number of rows in a table satisfying the criteria specified in the WHERE clause. If we want to count how many orders has made a customer with CustomerName of Smith, we will use the following SQL COUNT expression: ::
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SELECT COUNT * FROM Nodes
25
WHERE UserName = "Smith";
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In the above statement, the COUNT keyword returns the number 3, because the user Smith has 3 total nodes.
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If you don’t specify a WHERE clause when using the COUNT keyword, your statement will simply return the total number of rows in the table, which would be 6 in this example: ::
31
SELECT COUNT * FROM Nodes;