TABLESAMPLE returns wrong number of rows?

Question

I\'ve just discovered the TABLESAMPLE clause but surprisingly it doesn\'t return the number of rows i\'ve specified.

The table that i\'ve used has ~14M rows and i wa

Answer 1

From the documentation.

The actual number of rows that are returned can vary significantly. If you specify a small number, such as 5, you might not receive results in the sample.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189108(v=sql.90).aspx