title: Faster alternative in Oracle to SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sometable
body: <p>I've notice that in Oracle, the query</p>
  
  <pre><code>SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sometable;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is very slow for large tables.  It seems like the database it actually going through every row and incrementing a counter one at a time.  I would think that there would be a counter somewhere in the table how many rows that table has.</p>
  
  <p>So if I want to check the number of rows in a table in Oracle, what is the fastest way to do that?</p>