Apex Interactive Reports
Tony, February 06, 2013 - 3:22 pm UTC
Interestingly enough the count(*) over () technique is added to queries in Application Express in the background. This is done so that the apex engine can return the message "this query returns more than X rows" where X is your defined max reporting rows limit (i.e. 10,000 rows).
It may not be an ideal situation, but it does provide some useful functionality.