On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 18:48:17 +0200,
Enver ALTIN <enver(dot)altin(at)frontsite(dot)com(dot)tr> wrote:
>
> collect an ID list, choose one randomly and retrieve it. I wish I could
> do something like:
>
> select tiptext from tips order by random limit 1
>
> in PostgreSQL.
You can but it won't be very efficient (for large tables) as it will generate
a random ordering for the whole table, probably do a sort and then return the
first record. The only thing different you need to do is add () after random:
select tiptext from tips order by random() limit 1
If the number of tips isn't very large doing the above is probably best.