How To Return Random Records From A Table

Let us see how to return random 'n' records from a table

-- SAMPLE SCRIPT

CREATE TABLE #Customers (id integer, cname varchar(20), pincode int)

-- INSERT SAMPLE RECORDS

INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (1, 'Jack',45454 )
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (2, 'Jill', 43453)
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (3, 'Tom', 43453)
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (4, 'Kathy', 223434)
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (5, 'David', 65443)
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (6, 'Kathy', 456556)
INSERT INTO #Customers VALUES (7, 'Kim', 65443)

-- Return 3 random records from the #Customers table

SELECT TOP 3 cname,pincode FROM #Customers ORDER BY NEWID()

So what happens over here is that the NEWID() is used to generate a unique value of type uniqueidentifier. So ordering the results by this ID every time gives us random rows. Cool!!

About The Author

Suprotim Agarwal, MCSD, MCAD, MCDBA, MCSE, is the founder of DotNetCurry, DNC Magazine for Developers, SQLServerCurry and DevCurry. He has also authored a couple of books 51 Recipes using jQuery with ASP.NET Controls and a new one recently at The Absolutely Awesome jQuery CookBook.

Suprotim has received the prestigous Microsoft MVP award for nine times in a row now. In a professional capacity, he is the CEO of A2Z Knowledge Visuals Pvt Ltd, a digital group that represents premium web sites and digital publications comprising of Professional web, windows, mobile and cloud developers, technical managers, and architects.

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