>>>>>What's a better way to do a random "quote for the day"?
>>>>
>>>>What is your back-end?
>>>>
>>>>In SQL Server to generate a random record you will use
>>>>
>>>>select top 1 * from myTable order by NewID()
>>>>
>>>>In VFP I would agree with Sergey about generating random record using rand() function.
>>>
>>>Does that really work in SQL Server? I had not thought of using NewID in that way.
>>
>>Yes it works, because NewID generates a GUID which is a 128 bits random integer.
>
>The part I didn't (don't?) understand is how those IDs are associated with existing records in the table.


In VFP you coudl order by like this:

select firstName+lastName as fullName,firstName,lastName from myTable order by fullName

or:

select firstName+lastName as fullName,firstName,lastName from myTable order by 1

but not like this:

select firstName,lastName from employees order by firstName+lastName

when you don't need that calculated column in result (just using in ordering).

In SQL server however all of these are valid:

select firstName+lastName as fullName,firstName,lastName from myTable order by fullName

select firstName+lastName as fullName,firstName,lastName from myTable order by 1

select firstName,lastName from myTable order by firstName+lastName

In the same manner you could do:

select newId(),* from mytable order by 1

or:

select * from mytable order by newID()

Cetin