Question

I want to generate some test data so for each row in a table I want to insert 10 random rows in another, see below:

INSERT INTO CarFeatures 
  (carID, featureID)
SELECT C.ID, F.ID
  FROM dbo.Cars AS C
OUTER APPLY (
     SELECT TOP 10 ID
       FROM dbo.Features
   ORDER BY NEWID()
) AS F

Only trouble is this returns the same values for each row. How do I order them randomly?

Answer 1

What i usually do is create a temp table and define the PK as a GUID with the default value of newid(). You’ll need a create table statement for this, no select into. Then I insert my records into it and then I can order by the Id field and select the top ten.