Ok guys, here’s a tech article for your reading pleasure. Actually while I was working on a project, the client asked me to randomly select some percentage of the total records of a table! I was a little puzzled since I didn’t do this before. But what better than do it the first time. The first time is the best time actually!

Anyway, I did find some information on this on the net after searching about it. So I decided to write an article on it right here in my blog.

The trick involves using the NEWID() function of Microsoft SQL Server (verion 7 and above)

Ok, suppose if you want to select 10 percent of the total records in a given table, here is how you will select it:

SELECT TOP [x] PERCENT [COL1,COL2 ... COLn] FROM [TABLE_NAME] WHERE [COLx = 'SOME CONDITION'] ORDER BY NEWID(), [COL1,COL2 ... COLn]

( Where TOP [x] PERCENT represents the percent of the total records of the table that you want to select. [COL1,COL2 ... COLn] represents the columns that you want, [TABLE_NAME] is the table, COLx is the column with which you want to make a where condition and ORDER BY NEWID(), [COL1,COL2 ... COLn] is the key here. NEWID() is the function that does the trick, while [COL1,COL2 ... COLn] are the columns that you want the data to be ordered by.)

There. That’s it. You don’t have to write complex code or spent restless nights. One thing of importance here is that each DB Server has a different method to do the same job. So be careful while using this method. This article assumes that you are a Microsoft SQL Server (7 or above)  user.

At this site, you can find ways to do the above job on different database servers. Check it out. Post your comments to give me feedback about this article to help me improve the way I explain the things.

Possibly Related Articles