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

Order by rand() is very slow on large tables,

I found the following workaround in a php script:

Select min(id) as min, max(id) as max from table;

Then do random in php

$rand = rand($min, $max);

Then

'Select * from table where id>'.$rand.' limit 1';

Seems to be quite fast....