[thelist] Free SQL Tip

Burhan Khalid thelist at meidomus.com
Wed Sep 1 01:22:58 CDT 2004


On Tue, 2004-08-31 at 21:50, Joshua Olson wrote:

[ snipped out the <tip> tag, as to not have duplicate tips ]
> Here's a great way to get fields from a table back in random order on SQL
> Server.  First, add a new column, call it "rank".  Set it to data type
> "uniqueidentifier" and then set its formula to "(newid())".
> 
> Then, simply ORDER BY this new columns.  Example:
> 
> SELECT id, name, eyeColor
> FROM people
> ORDER BY rank

To do the same in MySQL:

SELECT id, name, eyeColor FROM `people` ORDER BY RAND()

You can also limit the results. For example, five random entries:

SELECT id, name, eyeColor FROM `people` ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

I guess RAND() is a MySQL specific function?





More information about the thelist mailing list