I am using Oracle 10g and the following paradigm to get a page of 15 results as a time (so that when the user is looking at page 2 of a search result, they see records 16-30).

select * 
  from 
( select rownum rnum, a.*
    from (my_query) a
   where rownum <= 30 )
where rnum > 15;

Right now I'm having to run a separate SQL statement to do a "select count" on "my_query" in order to get the total number of results for my_query (so that I can show it to the user and use it to figure out total number of pages, etc).

Is there any way to get the total number of results without doing this via a second query, i.e. by getting it from above query? I've tried adding "max(rownum)", but it doesn't seem to work (I get an error [ORA-01747] that seems to indicate it doesnt like me having the keyword rownum in the group by).

My rationale for wanting to get this from the original query rather than doing it in a separate SQL statement is that "my_query" is an expensive query so I'd rather not run it twice (once to get the count, and once to get the page of data) if I dont have to; but whatever solution I can come up with to get the number of results from within a single query (and at the same time get the page of data I need) should not add much if any additional overhead, if possible. Please advise.

Here is exactly what I'm trying to do for which I receive an ORA-01747 error because I believe it doesnt like me having ROWNUM in the group by. Note, If there is another solution that doesnt use max(ROWNUM), but something else, that is perfectly fine too. This solution was my first thought as to what might work.

 SELECT * FROM (SELECT r.*, ROWNUM RNUM, max(ROWNUM)
 FROM (SELECT t0.ABC_SEQ_ID AS c0, t0.FIRST_NAME, t0.LAST_NAME, t1.SCORE
 FROM ABC t0, XYZ t1
 WHERE (t0.XYZ_ID = 751) AND 
 t0.XYZ_ID = t1.XYZ_ID 
 ORDER BY t0.RANK ASC) r WHERE ROWNUM <= 30 GROUP BY r.*, ROWNUM) WHERE RNUM > 15