Fantastic work, great analysis.

If I may make the following observation: the Indexed View solution simply defers calculation from the SELECT query to the UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE queries that edit the source data, so we have simply moved the problem from an isolated domain (getting a count as part of a particular use case or procedure) to one that is not always obvious - any time when the unerlying data is modified.

What is the performance hit when the base table(s) are updated? Do ALL aggregates have to be recalculated? This is perhaps not ideal for a transactional database, but great for a data mart scenario in which updates are well defined and can be performance tuned.

IMHO the lack of paging support in SQL is a glaring omission, and the solutions that exist are all, in some measure, hacks. I guess the problem is, to some degree, moot - but that's another discussion!

Thanks again.