You have a record type, ABC_Author , backed by a database table.

According to Appian best practices, the most efficient way to retrieve the total number of authors without loading all the data is to use a query that includes an aggregation function. Option B uses an aggregation field with a COUNT function, which is designed to return the number of rows that match a query without the need to retrieve and load all row data, thus optimizing performance.

References

Appian Documentation: a!queryRecordType Function