sql server - How to include the total number of returned rows in the resultset from SELECT T-SQL command?

Question

I would like to ask if there is a way to include the total number of rows, as an additional column, in the returned result sets from a TSQL query using also the Row_Number command.

For example, getting the results set from a query against Book table in a form similar to this:

RowNum   BookId     BookTitle    TotalRows
--------------------------------------------
1        1056       Title1       5    
2        1467       Title2       5    
3        121        Title3       5    
4        1789       Title4       5    
5        789        Title5       5

The query is part of custom paging functionality implemented in a stored procedure. The goal is to return back only the records for the current page Index and limited to the page size, but also the amount of total number of records in the select statement in order to determine the total number of resultset pages.

Answer 1

In SQL Server 2008 and later, add COUNT(*) OVER () as one of the column names in your query and that will be populated with the total rows returned.

It is repeated in every single row but at least the value is available.

The reason why many other solutions do not work is that, for very large result sets, you will not know the total until after iterating all rows which is not practical in many cases (especially sequential processing solutions). This technique gives you the total count after calling the first IDataReader.Read(), for instance.

select COUNT(*) OVER () as Total_Rows, ... from ...