>i am working with call detail records, which contain millions of records.
>i need to go through and count how many times a each different city appears in the in the table. i need to do this for every city seperately.
>But it would be unreasonable to try and put all of the names of the cities i need to look for like: count where city = ausin.
>is there any way to make is count how many times each city appears in the call detail and tell me?
>
>thanks,
>ryan

Try with the next SELECT clause:

SELECT PADR(City,30), COUNT(*) AS Hits ;
  FROM MyTable ;
  ORDER BY Hits DESC ;
  GROUP BY City