This tip shows how (from a single stored procedure) select X (parameter) number of random records.
Say we have the famous Northwind database, table Customers.
We want to create a stored procedure fetching @cnt number of random records- meanig we can call it like
ListRandomCustomers 12
to get 12 random records
ListRandomCustomers 5
to get 5 random records
etc.
The trick is to use set rowcount for limiting the resultset - and the trick to get random records is to oder by newid()
create proc ListRandomCustomers(@cnt int)
as
set rowcount @cnt
select * from customers
order by newid()
set rowcount 0
