a change of query

select distinct cp.person_id from cluster_person cp, cluster c where cp.cluster_id = c.cluster_id and c.c_id = 1

can this query be changed to give just the row count?( of the distinct rows )

yes: i am aware of count() but this wont count the distinct rows - I can however achive this with an nested person_id in(select... etc but that slows things down big time!!!!

the above quey gives me my resultset asap - is there a way to get just the number of rows with the same speed

My thoughts are that I could just make a plpgsql  function with a GET Diagniostics ROW_COUNT -

thoughts?

James