How to request a random row in SQL?

Question

How can I request a random row (or as close to truly random as is possible) in pure SQL?

Answer 1

For SQL Server

newid()/order by will work, but will be very expensive for large result sets because it has to generate an id for every row, and then sort them.

TABLESAMPLE() is good from a performance standpoint, but you will get clumping of results (all rows on a page will be returned).

For a better performing true random sample, the best way is to filter out rows randomly. I found the following code sample in the SQL Server Books Online article Limiting Results Sets by Using TABLESAMPLE:

If you really want a random sample of individual rows, modify your query to filter out rows randomly, instead of using TABLESAMPLE. For example, the following query uses the NEWID function to return approximately one percent of the rows of the Sales.SalesOrderDetail table:

SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail
WHERE 0.01 >= CAST(CHECKSUM(NEWID(),SalesOrderID) & 0x7fffffff AS float)
              / CAST (0x7fffffff AS int)

The SalesOrderID column is included in the CHECKSUM expression so that NEWID() evaluates once per row to achieve sampling on a per-row basis. The expression CAST(CHECKSUM(NEWID(), SalesOrderID) & 0x7fffffff AS float / CAST (0x7fffffff AS int) evaluates to a random float value between 0 and 1.

When run against a table with 1,000,000 rows, here are my results:

SET STATISTICS TIME ON
SET STATISTICS IO ON

/* newid()
   rows returned: 10000
   logical reads: 3359
   CPU time: 3312 ms
   elapsed time = 3359 ms
*/
SELECT TOP 1 PERCENT Number
FROM Numbers
ORDER BY newid()

/* TABLESAMPLE
   rows returned: 9269 (varies)
   logical reads: 32
   CPU time: 0 ms
   elapsed time: 5 ms
*/
SELECT Number
FROM Numbers
TABLESAMPLE (1 PERCENT)

/* Filter
   rows returned: 9994 (varies)
   logical reads: 3359
   CPU time: 641 ms
   elapsed time: 627 ms
*/    
SELECT Number
FROM Numbers
WHERE 0.01 >= CAST(CHECKSUM(NEWID(), Number) & 0x7fffffff AS float) 
              / CAST (0x7fffffff AS int)

SET STATISTICS IO OFF
SET STATISTICS TIME OFF

If you can get away with using TABLESAMPLE, it will give you the best performance. Otherwise use the newid()/filter method. newid()/order by should be last resort if you have a large result set.

Answer 2

Solutions like Jeremies:

SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

work, but they need a sequential scan of all the table (because the random value associated with each row needs to be calculated - so that the smallest one can be determined), which can be quite slow for even medium sized tables. My recommendation would be to use some kind of indexed numeric column (many tables have these as their primary keys), and then write something like:

SELECT * FROM table WHERE num_value >= RAND() * 
    ( SELECT MAX (num_value ) FROM table ) 
ORDER BY num_value LIMIT 1

This works in logarithmic time, regardless of the table size, if num_value is indexed. One caveat: this assumes that num_value is equally distributed in the range 0..MAX(num_value). If your dataset strongly deviates from this assumption, you will get skewed results (some rows will appear more often than others).

Answer 3

It seems that many of the ideas listed still use ordering

However, if you use a temporary table, you are able to assign a random index (like many of the solutions have suggested), and then grab the first one that is greater than an arbitrary number between 0 and 1.

For example (for DB2):

WITH TEMP AS (
SELECT COMLUMN, RAND() AS IDX FROM TABLE)
SELECT COLUMN FROM TABLE WHERE IDX > .5
FETCH FIRST 1 ROW ONLY

Answer 4

As pointed out in @BillKarwin's comment on @cnu's answer...

When combining with a LIMIT, I've found that it performs much better (at least with PostgreSQL 9.1) to JOIN with a random ordering rather than to directly order the actual rows: e.g.

SELECT * FROM tbl_post AS t
JOIN ...
JOIN ( SELECT id, CAST(-2147483648 * RANDOM() AS integer) AS rand
       FROM tbl_post
       WHERE create_time >= 1349928000
     ) r ON r.id = t.id
WHERE create_time >= 1349928000 AND ...
ORDER BY r.rand
LIMIT 100

Just make sure that the 'r' generates a 'rand' value for every possible key value in the complex query which is joined with it but still limit the number of rows of 'r' where possible.

The CAST as Integer is especially helpful for PostgreSQL 9.2 which has specific sort optimisation for integer and single precision floating types.

Answer 5

Be careful because TableSample doesn't actually return a random sample of rows. It directs your query to look at a random sample of the 8KB pages that make up your row. Then, your query is executed against the data contained in these pages. Because of how data may be grouped on these pages (insertion order, etc), this could lead to data that isn't actually a random sample.

See: http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1308

This MSDN page for TableSample includes an example of how to generate an actualy random sample of data.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189108.aspx

Answer 6

In late, but got here via Google, so for the sake of posterity, I'll add an alternative solution.

Another approach is to use TOP twice, with alternating orders. I don't know if it is "pure SQL", because it uses a variable in the TOP, but it works in SQL Server 2008. Here's an example I use against a table of dictionary words, if I want a random word.

SELECT TOP 1
  word
FROM (
  SELECT TOP(@idx)
    word 
  FROM
    dbo.DictionaryAbridged WITH(NOLOCK)
  ORDER BY
    word DESC
) AS D
ORDER BY
  word ASC

Of course, @idx is some randomly-generated integer that ranges from 1 to COUNT(*) on the target table, inclusively. If your column is indexed, you'll benefit from it too. Another advantage is that you can use it in a function, since NEWID() is disallowed.

Lastly, the above query runs in about 1/10 of the exec time of a NEWID()-type of query on the same table. YYMV.