Anyone know of an interbase function like sql_num_rows??

[roomyz]

I was reading an article about SQL & PHP here

http://www.zend.com/zend/art/mistake1.php#Heading7

but I use interbase. I checked the php manual but there is no function like that.

Would it be a waste of resources if I make a query like

$Q = "Select count(fieldname) from StoredProcedureName(input)", $input);

to check whether there is any input and then put in the actual query(without the count()) to make the code more readable?

Or is there a function that i don't know of that does this for interbase? I have a lot of queries that I am preparing so I want to standardize them like in the article.