total number of matched results

[Ray Plante]

On Fri, 16 Jun 2006, Kevin Benson wrote:
> But I should note I am not in favor of it much.  If you think of 
> Relational db's and XMLDB's I would rather write a query that gets to a 
> limit like "100" (or actually 101 and strip off the last Resource Record). 
> And tell the user that there is more 
> with the more="true" attribute. Like we have now.  Instead of doing a huge 
> query to be put in memory only to populate one attribute of somehting like
> count="8000" and return back my limit of 100 resources.  

I see what you are saying.  Suppose you want to say limit 100; how do you, 
then, in your database ask for the 2nd 100 records (because the user said 
<from>101</from><to>200</to>)?  Would do a limit 201 and strip off the 
first 100?  I think that's what you'd have to in standard SQL.  In this 
case, it seems that a client that is going to process all matching records 
would eventually force the database to load 8000 records (and 7900, 
7800, ...).

I'm fine with leaving it out, but it is useful information.  A user 
knowing that there are 8000 matching results (even if 100 are 
returned) might be inclined to refine the next query to match fewer 
results.  

cheers,
Ray