How do I return random numbers as a column in SQL Server 2005?

Question

I\'m running a SQL query on SQL Server 2005, and in addition to 2 columns being queried from the database, I\'d also like to return 1 column of random numbers along with the

Answer 1

I use c# for dealing with random numbers. It's much cleaner. I have a function I use to return a list of random number and a unique key, then I just join the uniqueKey on the row number. Because I use c#, I can easily specify a range within which the random numbers must fall.

Here are the steps to making the function: http://www.sqlwithcindy.com/2013/04/elegant-random-number-list-in-sql-server.html

Here is what my query ends up looking like:

SELECT 
   rowNumber, 
   name, 
   randomNumber
FROM dbo.tvfRandomNumberList(1,10,100) 
INNER JOIN (select ROW_NUMBER() over (order by int_id) as 'rowNumber', name from client        
            )as clients
ON clients.rowNumber = uniqueKey

Answer 2

You need to use a UDF

first:

CREATE VIEW vRandNumber
AS
SELECT RAND() as RandNumber

second:

CREATE FUNCTION RandNumber()
RETURNS float
AS
  BEGIN
  RETURN (SELECT RandNumber FROM vRandNumber)
  END

test:

SELECT dbo.RandNumber(), *
FROM <table>

Above borrowed from Jeff's SQL Server Blog

Answer 3

You might like to consider generating a UUID instead of a random number using the newid function. These are guaranteed to be unique each time generated whereas there is a significant chance that some duplication will occur with a straightforward random number (and depending on what you're using it for could give you a phenominally hard to debug error at a later point)

Answer 4

For SQLServer, there are a couple of options.
1. A while loop to update an empty column with one random number at a time
2. A .net Assembly that contains a function that returns a random number

Answer 5

select RAND(CHECKSUM(NEWID()))

Answer 6

According to my testing, the answer above doesn't generate a value of 10000 ever. This probably isn't much of a problem when you are generating a random between 1 and 10000, but the same algorithm between 1 and 5 would be noticable. Add 1 to your mod.