how to override a table's cardinality or statistics histogram

Question

I remember reading once that it is possible to force SQL Server to assume a table is a certain size, or perhaps even override a statistics histogram, when compiling a query. Can someone explain how to do that, if it's possible?

To be clear: the purpose of this is to do what-if scenario analysis, outside of production, when writing queries. I am not talking about modifying the query itself or using query hints. (Examples of modifying the query and using query hints can be found in the answers to this question.)

Answer 1

You can use the UPDATE STATISTICS WITH ROWCOUNT and PAGECOUNT option

See here some examples : https://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/2870/using-with-rowcount-and-pagecount-option-of-sql-server-update-statistics/ or https://sqlsunday.com/2016/02/27/update-statistics-with-rowcount/