Sams Teach Yourself MySQL

Aggregate Functions

MySQL provides five aggregate functions that enable you to summarize table data without retrieving every row. By using these functions, you can find the total number of rows in a dataset, the sum of the values, or the highest, lowest, and average values.

The COUNT() Function

The COUNT() function counts values in a query. You can perform a count on a single column by putting the column name in parentheses. More commonly, though, you use COUNT(*) to return the total number of rows returned by a query.

The following example counts the total number of orders that have been placed in the sample database:

mysql> SELECT COUNT(*)
    -> FROM orders;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|        7 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)