Thanks everyone for your help.

Much appreciated.

Andrew

Jack Corbett (4/6/2008)

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So you really aren't looking for every nth item you are looking for n records, these are 2 very different requirements. Couldn't you load each location separately?...

Thanks Jeff,

We don't have a Primary Key defined on the table.

We do have a unique clustered index on (LOCATION, ITEM, DATE).

Should we define this combination of columns as the Primary...

Thanks, Jack.

Yes, we do inserts into this table, and rollbacks are possible. However, we don't really need the 'exact' nth item.

The business reason: We have an application which...

Thanks Antonio,

No, I am not looking for random data - I need every nth item, ordered by item.

The real database has (many) other tables, including an item table, with exactly...