Select Random Rows from a Table – SQL Server

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There are multiple ways to randomly select rows from a table. In this blog post, I will show two ways of doing so:

Method 1: Random Number of Rows

DECLARE @n int
SET @n=RAND()*10
SELECT TOP (@n) * FROM sysobjects

Method 2: Random Number of Rows as well as Data

DECLARE @n int
SET @n=RAND()*10
SELECT TOP (@n) * FROM sysobjects
ORDER BY NEWID()

The second method is easy to use and fetches data more randomly.

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About The Author

Madhivanan,an MSc computer Science graduate from Chennai-India, works as a works as a Lead Subject Matter Expert at a company that simplifies BIG data. He started his career as a developer working with Visual Basic 6.0, SQL Server 2000 and Crystal Report 8. As years went by, he started working more on writing queries in SQL Server. He now has good level of knowledge in SQLServer, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL as well. He is also one of the leading posters at www.sqlteam.com and a moderator at www.sql-server-performance.com. His T-sql blog is at http://beyondrelational.com/blogs/madhivanan

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