Here's the code I used (revised from the previous code to include method #4)...

--table to hold results

CREATE TABLE #Results (NumberOfTableRows INT, NumberOfRows INT, ProbabilityOfEachRow FLOAT,

Adrian,

I've just had a go at implementing your suggestion on my data (I really don't have time, but I can't help myself )....

LOL Jeff

Actually, the results from my tests above don't show that the data is 'more random' with checksum - only that the...

I actually needed to use this on something, so I've just spent an hour playing around with it.

Here's some testing I've...

Using "ORDER BY CHECKSUM(NEWID())" rather than "ORDER BY NEWID()" apparently produces values with a better random distribution.

Thanks Jeff

Oh, and here are my favo(u)rite date links (so to speak)...

http://www.sql-server-performance.com/articles/dev/datetime_datatype_p1.aspx

http://sqlserver2000.databases.aspfaq.com/why-should-i-consider-using-an-auxiliary-calendar-table.html

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=64762

I hope someone finds all this stuff useful...

Incidentally, if you're using SQL 2005, you can jump straight to the final result fairly elegantly.

Code is safe to run...

DECLARE @MY_EVENTS TABLE (DESCRIPTION VARCHAR(50),...

Hi all,

I'd approach it more like this, I think. The code below produces the same results and is safe to run...

DECLARE @MY_EVENTS TABLE (DESCRIPTION VARCHAR(50),...

Very nicely-presented article - well done Jacob!

My only suggestion would be to rename this particular article to 'Simple XML Processing', as some people might be unnecessarily scared off 

Here's another method. This one adds an identity column, uses it, and then drops it.

ALTER TABLE dbo.employee ADD...

Here's a selection of results when I run the above code on a server here.

39 seconds to find all primes below 5...

Hi Jeff,

Here's some code so you can run it yourself. I'll add some run results in the next post.

--Inputs

DECLARE @MaxNumber INT

SET @MaxNumber...

Finding primes is something I worked on about 6 months ago (for fun, of course ). Here's a link to the work...

Just because I have them handy, here are a few links to discussions on this topic...

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=64803

http://www.sqlteam.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=67294