Select n random rows from SQL Server table

Question

I\'ve got a SQL Server table with about 50,000 rows in it. I want to select about 5,000 of those rows at random. I\'ve thought of a complicated way, creating a temp table wi

Answer 1

select top 10 percent * from [yourtable] order by newid()

In response to the "pure trash" comment concerning large tables: you could do it like this to improve performance.

select  * from [yourtable] where [yourPk] in 
(select top 10 percent [yourPk] from [yourtable] order by newid())

The cost of this will be the key scan of values plus the join cost, which on a large table with a small percentage selection should be reasonable.