I have a large database and need to find how many records it contains, (it gets update very often) and print it to our page (Via perls DBI). The problems is, doing a SELECT * from everytime takes resources. Is there a function to just find how many records a database has without quering it all the time?

You should use the "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM tablename" or else use the SHOW TABLE STATUS command, as in "SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'tablename'" and look for the column 'Rows'. This works fine on MyISAM tables but if you are using InnoDb tables the SELECT COUNT(*) will have the same performance impact you are currently experiencing since it will also do a full table scan.

Thanks!