Here’s a simple script that I use often – a quick hitter to find table row counts, that doesn’t use the Select Count(*). It uses the sysindexes table thus the reason it’s called “fairly accurate”.
SELECT [TableName] = so.name, [RowCount] = MAX(si.rows) FROM sysobjects so, sysindexes si WHERE so.xtype = 'U' AND si.id = OBJECT_ID(so.name) GROUP BY so.name ORDER BY 2 DESC


