MySQL: Alternatives to ORDER BY RAND()

Question

I\'ve read about a few alternatives to MySQL\'s ORDER BY RAND() function, but most of the alternatives apply only to where on a single random result is needed.

Answer 1

I ran into this today and was trying to use 'DISTINCT' along with JOINs, but was getting duplicates I assume because the RAND was making each JOINed row distinct. I muddled around a bit and found a solution that works, like this:

SELECT DISTINCT t.id, 
                t.photo 
       FROM (SELECT  u.id, 
                     p.photo,
                     RAND() as rand
                FROM users u, profiles p 
                 WHERE p.memberid = u.id 
                  AND p.photo != '' 
                  AND (u.ownership=1 OR u.stamp=1)
                ORDER BY rand) t
       LIMIT 18