>>>Is there any way to count records in a buffered (mode 5) view without moving the record pointer?
>>
>>Check new WITH (buffering) option of Select-SQL. I'm not sure how does it work internally and it is a slow option, be aware.
>
>I'm curious though... why can't the table header be used for count operations? Doesn't the header have an accurate count of records?

Well, I guess you can use table header, but it's a bit dangerous. However, you may try just reading this info from the header.