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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T21:32:40+00:00

Here is a simplified query of something I am trying to do on a

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Here is a simplified query of something I am trying to do on a larger join query. It is still breaking on this small scale. I am trying to generate a random number for each row pulled back in the range of 1-60. I then want to order the returned rows by this random number.

 SELECT downloads . * , 
(FLOOR( 1 + ( RAND( ) *60 ) )) AS randomtimer
FROM downloads
ORDER BY randomtimer
LIMIT 25

I have 2 databases I have tried this query on. A live one and a dev one. I have side by side compared the two and they are both structurally the same. It works correctly on the dev one. returning the rows ordered by the randomtimer.

The live table returns all 1’s in the randomtimer column. If I order by randomtimer ASC they become all 60s. If I remove randomtimer from the Order By Clause it returns correct individual values. So something is tweaking the values on the ORDER BY statment.

Anyone have any ideas on this? Might I be overlooking something? WTF? WTF?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Aside from what mr. unknown has said, there’s another issue.

    You are generating a random number between 1 and 60 then selecting the top 25 rows. If there are enough rows that you would (statistically) end up with more than 25 with a random value of 1, then the first 25 rows would of course all have a value of 1 in the “randomtimer” column.

    So this is likely due to the fact that you just have a lot more data in production than on the dev server.

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