A detailed explanation of the use of COUNT functions in MySQL

The COUNT function of MySQL is the simplest and most useful calculation, predicting the number of records returned by one SELECT statement.

To understand that the table of EMPLOYEE_TBL considered by the COUNT function has the following records:

mysql> SELECT * FROM employee_tbl;
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
| id  | name | work_date | daily_typing_pages |
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
|  1 | John | 2007-01-24 |        250 |
|  2 | Ram | 2007-05-27 |        220 |
|  3 | Jack | 2007-05-06 |        170 |
|  3 | Jack | 2007-04-06 |        100 |
|  4 | Jill | 2007-04-06 |        220 |
|  5 | Zara | 2007-06-06 |        300 |
|  5 | Zara | 2007-02-06 |        350 |
+------+------+------------+--------------------+
7 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Now to count the number of rows in this table, based on the table above, you can make the following assumptions:

mysql>SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employee_tbl ;
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|    7 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

Similarly, if you want to count 1, you can count 1 as the following number recorded as Zara:

mysql>SELECT COUNT(*) FROM employee_tbl
  -> WHERE name="Zara";
+----------+
| COUNT(*) |
+----------+
|    2 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.04 sec)

Note: All SQL queries are case sensitive, so it doesn't make any difference if you give ZARA or Zara in the where condition.