To select four random tables, use ORDER BY RAND(). Following is the syntax −
select TABLE_NAME AS anyAliasName from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA = ‘yourDatabaseName’; order by rand() limit yourLimitNumber;
Let us implement the above syntax in order to select four random tables from a MySQL database that has thousands of tables.
Here, LIMIT is used to set the number of records you want to fetch. Since we want 4 records, therefore we would be using LIMIT 4. Following is the query −
mysql> select TABLE_NAME AS Random4TableName from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where TABLE_SCHEMA = 'web' order by rand() limit 4;
This will produce the following output −
+------------------+ | Random4TableName | +------------------+ | demotable474 | | demotable313 | | demotable452 | | demotable382 | +------------------+ 4 rows in set (0.20 sec)