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 used this http://jan.kneschke.de/projects/mysql/order-by-rand/ posted by Riedsio (i used the case of a stored procedure that returns one or more random values):

   DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS rands;
   CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE rands ( rand_id INT );

    loop_me: LOOP
        IF cnt < 1 THEN
          LEAVE loop_me;
        END IF;

        INSERT INTO rands
           SELECT r1.id
             FROM random AS r1 JOIN
                  (SELECT (RAND() *
                                (SELECT MAX(id)
                                   FROM random)) AS id)
                   AS r2
            WHERE r1.id >= r2.id
            ORDER BY r1.id ASC
            LIMIT 1;

        SET cnt = cnt - 1;
      END LOOP loop_me;

In the article he solves the problem of gaps in ids causing not so random results by maintaining a table (using triggers, etc...see the article); I'm solving the problem by adding another column to the table, populated with contiguous numbers, starting from 1 (edit: this column is added to the temporary table created by the subquery at runtime, doesn't affect your permanent table):

   DROP TEMPORARY TABLE IF EXISTS rands;
   CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE rands ( rand_id INT );

    loop_me: LOOP
        IF cnt < 1 THEN
          LEAVE loop_me;
        END IF;

        SET @no_gaps_id := 0;

        INSERT INTO rands
           SELECT r1.id
             FROM (SELECT id, @no_gaps_id := @no_gaps_id + 1 AS no_gaps_id FROM random) AS r1 JOIN
                  (SELECT (RAND() *
                                (SELECT COUNT(*)
                                   FROM random)) AS id)
                   AS r2
            WHERE r1.no_gaps_id >= r2.id
            ORDER BY r1.no_gaps_id ASC
            LIMIT 1;

        SET cnt = cnt - 1;
      END LOOP loop_me;

In the article i can see he went to great lengths to optimize the code; i have no ideea if/how much my changes impact the performance but works very well for me.