How to do a 'select count' without a cursor

Question

I am trying to do a select which will return exactly one row, such as:
select count(*) from orders;
Since there is inherent overhead in using a cursor, I am trying to find a way to do this without
generating a result set (both executeQuery and execute use result sets to return the data).
What I am looking for is something equivalent to ESQL:
select count(*) from orders INTO integervariable;
Does anyone know how to do this?

Answer 1

The reason for the concern is because I am issuing the
SQL many times (thousands), with a slightly different
'where' clause each time, and the platform I am using
doesn't support 'prepare's.
So, even ignoring the overhead question, is there a
way to do this without using a result set, which
has an inherent cursor.No - there is no way of doing this without using a resultset.