NUM_ROWS vs COUNT(*) anomaly

Hi,

I noticed a weird anomaly when checking that the data in my database had loaded properly.

If I do

SELECT table_name, num_rows
FROM user_tables
WHERE table_name='table_A';

I get a value for num_rows of 5424908.

If, however I just do

SELECT count(*)
FROM table_A;

I get a value of 5424804 (incidentally, the correct value).

OK, so I know that num_rows is from the data dictionary and the count is directly on the table, but why are the values different? Any ideas??

Thanks,

Sarah Received on Thu Jan 13 2000 - 03:10:55 CST