Selecting random fields from columns 1

[d44]

I have a table with customers records (tbl_customers) and I am wanting to randomly pick around 1500 records from a list of 5000.The fields are pretty simple....'Forename','Surname','Address' etc.

I could at the very worst just pick lots of 100 or so at a time and put into a new db, but was hoping to be able to use some random function, but wasnt sure how.

 

[mikevh]

If you want to select 1500 records at random, this
will do it:

SELECT TOP 1500 fieldlist
FROM yourtable
ORDER BY RND(somenumericfield);

where 'fieldlist' is the list of fields you want
'yourtable' is of course your table
'somenumericfield' is some numeric field in your table
(doesn't have to be in fieldlist)

If you don't have a numeric field in the table, you
can cheat by using RND(LENGTH(somenonnumericfield))