postgresql - quick random row selection in Postgres

Question

I have a table in postgres that contains couple of millions of rows. I have checked on the internet and I found the following

SELECT myid FROM mytable ORDER BY RANDOM() LIMIT 1;

It works, but it's really slow... is there another way to make that query, or a direct way to select a random row without reading all the table? By the way 'myid' is an integer but it can be an empty field.

Answer 1

You might want to experiment with OFFSET, as in

SELECT myid FROM mytable OFFSET floor(random()*N) LIMIT 1;

The N is the number of rows in mytable. You may need to first do a SELECT COUNT(*) to figure out the value of N.

Update (by Antony Hatchkins)

You must use floor here:

SELECT myid FROM mytable OFFSET floor(random()*N) LIMIT 1;

Consider a table of 2 rows; random()*N generates 0 <= x < 2 and for example SELECT myid FROM mytable OFFSET 1.7 LIMIT 1; returns 0 rows because of implicit rounding to nearest int.