>>>>>>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

Gee, folks, I know how VFP works ;-) It was the ability to order a SQL Server query by an expression not to be found (even concatenated) in the table that I was unaware of.