On Apr 16, 2009, at 9:24 PM, Edward McCarroll wrote: > I refuse to believe that any respectable DBMS would scan an entire > table if the goal was to find "N random rows". If you happen to use, say, hmmm, Oracle, there is a handy 'sample' clause: select * from emp sample( 10 ); http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/SQL_FAQ#Can_one_select_a_random_collection_of_rows_from_a_table.3F Cheers, -- PA. http://alt.textdrive.com/nanoki/