Access SQL How to select randomly a group of contiguous rows

Question

can this be done, say I have rows (1,2,3,4,5) and I want to grab three rows, select one randomly and then get it's neighbors, so maybe the random selection is row (3), I can also grab (2,4) if I wanted its neighbors, do I just pick one at random and then look for the unique key before and after like this or can I do it all in one sql statement.

I was going to use ADO from excel to pull records (so VBA connects to access, opens a recordset with sql instructions and so on).

Hope I was clear!

I would love to just do this all in a SQL statement

Answer 1

I am not sure Access is capable of all the SQL commands such as SQL Server, so this may be a bit of a problem. If you have a primary key though, you can easly generate a Select query in VBA and then pass open recordset with this SQL.

Dim sSQL as String
Dim lRand as Long
Dim rs as ADODB.Recordset 'or DAO.Recordset'
lRand = VBA.Int(VBA.Rnd() * TableRecordCount) ' TableRecordCount is the number of records in the table that you need to get somehow'
sSQL = "SELECT * FROM TableName WHERE (ID>=" & lRand - 1 & " AND ID <=" & lRand + 1
set rs = CurrentDB.OpenRecordset(sSQL, ...)

I am now not absolutely sure of what you want to use and depending on ADODB or DAO choice, you need to open the recordset accordingly with wither Call rs.Open or Set rs = DB.OpenRecordset