Total Records Keep Varying

I have database I’m trying to extract my contacts from, which contains somewhere between 33,000 to 39,000 contacts. The reason I don’t know the exact number is because everytime I refresh the query MySQL keeps giving me a varying total count.

Are total results provided by MySQL only estimations that are prone to fluctuate?

Are you using a count query to count them or just a normal select and using something like mysqli_num_rows() (which is a PHP function to get the number of rows in a result set - asp and .net probably have equivalent functions)?

I’m getting the results straight from PHPMyAdmin, using just a simple SELECT statement. I guess this is a PHPMyAdmin issue rather than a MySQL issue. I hadn’t thought to run a COUNT() query until reading your reply. This does bring back consistent results.

I guess it is PHPMyAdmin that draws the wildly varying estimates.

When you run the simple SELECT statment against the database direct through php and not via phpmyadmin, do you get consistant results?