No. Doing a second count query is not "inheritantly more inefficient" than fetching all the results from one query. Suppose you have 1 million rows but only want 100. Which do you think will be more efficient - a) fetching 100 rows and then fetching the number 1 million (not a million rows, just the number 1 million) in a second query for a total fetch of 101 rows OR b) fetching 1 million rows for a total fetch of 1,000,000 rows?