Re: Generate random numbers in PL/SQL, any good ways? Is there an internal?

In article <d7hansl.774016863_at_dtek.chalmers.se>

           d7hansl_at_dtek.chalmers.se "Hans Lindberg" writes:

> Hi!
> I'm looking for a way to generate test data with certain probabilities
> for the different values of the data. I can't find any random number
> generator in neither the SQL ref man nor the PL/SQL ditto. Am I missing
> the obvious or isn't there any? Do I have to implement a my own random

Einstein said "Only God can be random." So you need a very good freelancer.

In fact, randomness is a non-relational idea. What you have is a variant of the 'table of dates' problem - how do we generate output to tell us nothing happened on a day when there's no data for the day to drive the query. Oracle is not good at this.

In fact, without wishing to step outside the boundaries of the group, I would suggest that randomness is by definition unprogrammable. What you could do, however, is write a program that makes no *relational* sense but pulls you back a whole bunch of rowids that you sould substring to numeric format.

This would not truly be random, but it would at least be unpredictable.

M

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                                                    MarkB_at_aboy.demon.co.uk
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