title: Getting row count for a table in MySQL?
body: <p>Can anyone tell me which is he better appraoch in MySQL whin it comes to finding the row count of a table: is it better to do </p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT COUNT(*) FROM TABLE_NAME
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or to look up the row count in the table <code>TABLE</code> in the <code>INFORMATION_SCHEMA</code>?</p>
  
  <p>This would be a frequent operation for calculating pagination counts for pages?</p>
  
  <p>I should add that tables will only have a few thousand rows at most.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks</p>
  
  <p>Martin O'Shea.</p>