Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Use this function in conjunction with the SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS option of a SELECT statement to determine the number of rows an SQL statement using a LIMIT clause would have generated without the limitation. There are no arguments for the function. It’s available as of version 4 of MySQL. Here is an example:

SELECT SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS 
name_first, name_last, telephone_home,
DATEDIFF(now( ), last_review)
AS 'Days Since Last Review'
FROM employees 
WHERE dept = 'sales'
ORDER BY last_review DESC
LIMIT 10;

SELECT FOUND_ROWS();

In the first statement, we retrieve a list of sales people to review, limited to the 10 who have gone the longest without a performance review. In the second SQL statement, we’re getting a total count of how many employees there are to review in the sales department.