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 needed a query to return a large number of random rows from a rather large table. This is what I came up with. First get the maximum record id:

SELECT MAX(id) FROM table_name;

Then substitute that value into:

SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE id > FLOOR(RAND() * max) LIMIT n;

Where max is the maximum record id in the table and n is the number of rows you want in your result set. The assumption is that there are no gaps in the record id's although I doubt it would affect the result if there were (haven't tried it though). I also created this stored procedure to be more generic; pass in the table name and number of rows to be returned. I'm running MySQL 5.5.38 on Windows 2008, 32GB, dual 3GHz E5450, and on a table with 17,361,264 rows it's fairly consistent at ~.03 sec / ~11 sec to return 1,000,000 rows. (times are from MySQL Workbench 6.1; you could also use CEIL instead of FLOOR in the 2nd select statement depending on your preference)

DELIMITER $$

USE [schema name] $$

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `random_rows` $$

CREATE PROCEDURE `random_rows`(IN tab_name VARCHAR(64), IN num_rows INT)
BEGIN

SET @t = CONCAT('SET @max=(SELECT MAX(id) FROM ',tab_name,')');
PREPARE stmt FROM @t;
EXECUTE stmt;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;

SET @t = CONCAT(
    'SELECT * FROM ',
    tab_name,
    ' WHERE id>FLOOR(RAND()*@max) LIMIT ',
    num_rows);

PREPARE stmt FROM @t;
EXECUTE stmt;
DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
END
$$

then

CALL [schema name].random_rows([table name], n);