Question

I have one table and I want to select 10 rows randomly. But I also need to select any rows that are on “sale”. I only want only 10 rows, there may be 2 sale rows there may be 9, I need to fill the remaining with random rows. I need a single query.

SELECT TOP 10 BookTitle, BookAuthor, BookCategory
FROM TheTable
ORDER BY newid()

SELECT TOP 10 BookTitle, BookAuthor, BookCategory
FROM TheTable
WHERE BookCategory LIKE 'Sale%' 

I keep striking out, I may be over / under thinking this ….

Thanks.

Answer 1

Not very efficient for a large table but…

SELECT TOP 10 BookTitle,
              BookAuthor,
              BookCategory
FROM   TheTable
ORDER  BY CASE
            WHEN BookCategory LIKE 'Sale%' THEN 0
            ELSE 1
          END,
          newid()  

If your table is large you should probably do 2 queries. One to get sale items and then the second to get the “top up” number of random non sale items only if required.