MySQL select 10 random rows from 600K rows fast

Question

How can I best write a query that selects 10 rows randomly from a total of 600k?

Answer 1

I am getting fast queries (around 0.5 seconds) with a slow cpu, selecting 10 random rows in a 400K registers MySQL database non-cached 2Gb size. See here my code: Fast selection of random rows in MySQL

$time= microtime_float();

$sql='SELECT COUNT(*) FROM pages';
$rquery= BD_Ejecutar($sql);
list($num_records)=mysql_fetch_row($rquery);
mysql_free_result($rquery);

$sql="SELECT id FROM pages WHERE RAND()*$num_records<20
   ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 0,10";
$rquery= BD_Ejecutar($sql);
while(list($id)=mysql_fetch_row($rquery)){
    if($id_in) $id_in.=",$id";
    else $id_in="$id";
}
mysql_free_result($rquery);

$sql="SELECT id,url FROM pages WHERE id IN($id_in)";
$rquery= BD_Ejecutar($sql);
while(list($id,$url)=mysql_fetch_row($rquery)){
    logger("$id, $url",1);
}
mysql_free_result($rquery);

$time= microtime_float()-$time;

logger("num_records=$num_records",1);
logger("$id_in",1);
logger("Time elapsed: $time segundos",1);