getting the number pf rows in a query result

My site have a complicated search, the search give the results in two stages- the first one giving the number of results in each section:

"In the forums there is X results for the word X
In the articles there is X results..."

And when the user click one of those lines, the list shows the specific results in that section.

My problem is that I don't know how to calculate the first part, for now I use dataset, and table.rows.count to show the number of results in each section. Since my site have more then ten, it looks like a great waste to fill such large dataset (in some words it can be thousands of rows in each section) only for getting the number of rows…

Are there is a sql procedure or key word that will give me only the number of results (the number of times that specific word showing in the columns?)

Great thanksyou can do a

select count(*) from table where <condition>

to get the # of records matching your condition.

hthsql