[thelist] DB "Limit" Command Question

[Luther, Ron]

Edward McCarroll wisely noted:

>>I refuse to believe that any respectable DBMS would scan an entire
>>table if the goal was to find "N random rows".


Hi Edward,

I completely agree with you.  Unfortunately I believe I am being asked to work with one.  I just wanted to cross-check my understanding of how the world is supposed to work.

Thanks!
RonL.

It *is* a respectable DBMS, (honest) ... it's just very specialized.  It was tuned to do OLTP things so really really well that it's command syntax is a bit lacking in the data warehousery department where finding 'n random rows' might be an interesting thing to do.