Madhivanan

Generating Random Numbers - Part II

There are many methods to generate random numbers. Here are some of them

select number from
(
select top 10000 abs(checksum(newid())) as number 
from sysobjects s1 cross join sysobjects s2
) as T

select number from
(
select top 1000 abs(cast(cast(newid() as varbinary(10)) as int)) as number 
from sysobjects s1 cross join sysobjects s2
)  as T

 
If you want to generate 4 digits random number, then use

 
select number/power(10,len(number)-4) as number from
(
select top 10000 abs(checksum(newid())) as number 
from sysobjects s1 cross join sysobjects s2
) as T


If you want to generate 2 digits random number, then use

select number/power(10,len(number)-2) as number from
(
select top 10000 abs(checksum(newid())) as number 
from sysobjects s1 cross join sysobjects s2
) as T


If you use  SQL Server 2005, you can also apply the same approach on the following query
 
select row_number() over (order by s1.name) as number 
from sysobjects s1 cross join sysobjects s2