Question

Possible Duplicate:
Select n random rows from SQL Server table

I have database and table like that:

Persons

id  Name
--  -----
1   Jim
2   John
3   Jaimy

I want to pick one row in the result randomly. Is there any function in SQL Server?

Answer 1

This might do it for you –

SELECT TOP 1 id, Name
FROM Persons
ORDER BY NEWID()

The Random purists won’t like it. It works by generating a new GUID for each row.
It might also hurt performance if you have a lot of rows in the Persons table. Ideally you’d want to find a way to minimise the number of rows that you run that over first.

There is a more detailed answer in this question that might answer the question fully.