Retrieving random data from SQL Server with

TABLESAMPLE
By: Greg Robidoux
System

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Problem
In a previous tip we talked about how to randomly retrieve records from the database. This
tip took a look at both the RAND() function and the NEWID() function. Both of these
approaches are helpful, but one problem with both of these is that depending on how you
use them you may end up reading through your entire table to get a random distribution of
data. The good part about this is that you are pretty much guaranteed that you will get a
totally random set of records each time. Because of the potential overhead with reading
through the entire table are there any other approaches to randomly retrieving data?
Solution
In SQL Server 2005 a new option has been added to the FROM clause. This new option is
the TABLESAMPLE feature. With the TAMPLESAMPLE option you are able to get a sample set
of data from your table without having to read through the entire table or having to assign
temporary random values to each row of data. At first glance this sounds great, but there
are a few things to keep in mind when using this new option.
The way this works is that data is read at a page level. Each 8K page for the table is given
a random value and based on this random value and the value you specify either number of
rows or percentage will determine how many rows are returned. So based on this, each run
can retrieve a totally different number of rows of data.
How to use it
To use TABLESAMPLE, this clause is put after the FROM clause as follows:

...FROM tableName TABLESAMPLE (10 PERCENT)

...FROM tableName TABLESAMPLE (1000 ROWS)

You would think that the 1000 ROWS option would return 1000 rows, but what happens is
that this number is converted to a percent prior to execution based on the number you
specified and the approximate number of rows in the table. So once again you are not
guaranteed an exact number of rows.
Here is a sample query against the AdventureWorks database.
SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail TABLESAMPLE (1000 ROWS)
Here are a few sample runs using the above statement:

Run #

# of Rows

1288

658

806

1232

1064

As you can see none of these executions returned 1000 rows. The total number of rows is
pretty random. To help make this return an exact number of rows you can use
the TOP command as well such as:
SELECT TOP 250 * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail TABLESAMPLE (1000 ROWS)
By using the TOP command with a smaller number than the sample rows we are pretty
much guaranteed to get the number of rows we are expecting from the query.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you make the ROWS value too small there is a
chance that you can get no data returned from the query. In my tests when I set this value
to (100 ROWS) some of the executions returned no data at all. So keep this in mind.
Another thing to be aware of is that the data is pulled page by page, not row by row. So
based on this your sampling dataset will be as diverse as the data is that is stored on each
data page. So based on our example. the clustered index is on the SalesOrderID. This value
is not all that random across each page of data and therefore we have groups of data that
are random versus a complete random set of data at a row level.
Here is another query to further illustrate this.
SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail TABLESAMPLE (1000 ROWS)
As you can see from the five executions below the SalesOrderID is the same for all of the
executions except for run #4. So since the data is stored based on the SalesOrderID a
sample of only 10 records will not be all that random.

SalesOrderID returned
Run #1

Run #2

Run #3

Run #4

Run #5

47967
47967
47967
47967
47967

50208
50208
50208
50208
50208

43850
43850
43850
43850
43850

44311
44311
44312
44312
44312

44127
44127
44127
44127
44127

47967
47967
47967
47967
47967

50208
50208
50208
50208
50208

43850
43850
43850
43850
43850

44312
44313
44313
44313
44313

44127
44127
44127
44127
44127

In addition to randomly retrieving data you can all use the REPEATABLE option so that the
query returns the same random set of data each time you run the query. Again this
assumes that your data has not changed.
SELECT TOP 10 * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail TABLESAMPLE (1000 ROWS)
REPEATABLE (25)
When the above query is run the sample set of data that is returned will be the same each
time the query is executed.