# Count
<a name="CountingDataSelect"></a>

If you want to count the number of items in a result set instead of returning the items, use `count(*)`. Instead of returning a list of items, Amazon SimpleDB returns a single item called `Domain` with a `Count` attribute.

**Note**  
 If the count request takes more than five seconds, Amazon SimpleDB returns the number of items that it could count and a next token to return additional results. The client is responsible for accumulating the partial counts.   
 If Amazon SimpleDB returns a 408 Request Timeout, please resubmit the request.   
 The default result limit of 100 and maximum result limit of 2500 do not apply to count(\*). However, you can restrict the maximum number of counted results using the limit clause. 

 The next token returned by `count(*)` and `select` are interchangeable as long as the `where` and `order by` clauses match. For example, if you want to return the 200 items after the first 10,000 (similar to an offset), you can perform a count with a limit clause of 10,000 and use the next token to return the next 200 items with `select`. 

The following table shows `count(*)` queries and the results they return from the sample dataset.

**Note**  
To view the source data for the queries, see [Sample Query Data Set](UsingSelectSampleDataset.md). 


| Select Expression | Description | Result | 
| --- | --- | --- | 
| select count(\*) from mydomain where Title = 'The Right Stuff' | Counts all items where the attribute "Title" equals "The Right Stuff." | 1 | 
| select count(\*) from mydomain where Year > '1985' | Counts all items where "Year" is greater than "1985." | 3 | 
| select count(\*) from mydomain limit 500 | Counts all items in the domain, with a limit of 500. | 6 | 
| select count(\*) from mydomain limit 4 | Counts all items in the domain, with a limit of 4. | 4 |