Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

The TABLESAMPLE Clause

The TABLESAMPLE clause lets you query a random sample of data from a table (either an exact number of rows or a percentage of rows). You can use TABLESAMPLE to quickly return a sample from a large table when the sample does not have to be a truly random sample at the level of individual rows. This clause is also useful when you want to test your code against a random subset of data that you copy from a production environment or when you just want to test the validity of your solutions against a subset of data as opposed to the entire data set.

To return a random sample of data using the TABLESAMPLE clause, you specify it in a query’s FROM clause, right after the table name or table alias. The TABLESAMPLE clause has the ...