How To Generate Random Data in PostgreSQL

There are occasionally reasons to use random data, or even random sequences of data. PostgreSQL supports this with the random SQL function. The following are some nice examples of how to use this.

The random() Function

Click to run the following multiple times and you’ll see that each time a different random number between 0 and 1 is returned.

If you’d like to scale it to be between 0 and 20 for example you can simply multiply it by your chosen amplitude:

And if you’d like it to have some different offset you can simply subtract or add that. The following will return values between -10 and 10:

Seeding the Random

Often you want random data but would like it to be the same random data every time it’s run. To do so we want to set the starting seed (always between 0 and 1) for the random number generator.

Try running the following query multiple times:

Notice that it returns a random result as expected, but unlike above, it’s the same random result every time. Change the seed value (.123) in the setseed function above and notice that it will now choose a different random value but maintain that on multiple runs. To get the answer correct to the above SQLBox, set the seed to .42.

To understand what’s happening, imagine that there is a long list of random numbers that the computer chooses from. Setting the seed is like telling PostgreSQL to always start at the same spot every time.

A quick tip: some SQL interfaces’s (like Chartio’s) won’t let you run/return multiple queries in a connection, which is necessary to set the seed. This can be worked around by using the WITH function as shown here:

Random Sequences

If you’d like full sequences of random data you can use the generate_series function to generate a series of dates.

... FROM generate_series([start date], [end date], [increment])

The following example gets a random value for each day between February 2017 and April 2017.

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), random() FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

We’ve visualized the sequence with Chartio here to make it more clear what’s going on with the data.

The above results are all between 0 and 1 as again that is what’s returned from random(). As above, to add an amplitude and minimum offset to it we can simply multiple and add to the random value. The following makes a random sequence with values in the range of 10 to 17.

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), 10 + 7*random() FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

Random Growth Sequence

To make a sequence increase linearly we can use PostgreSQL’s row_number() over() functions to get an increasing count of what row we’re on.

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), (10 + 7*random())*(row_number() over()) as value FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

Multiplying the row number by our random makes our data linearly increase as you can see in the chart.

Random Exponential Sequence

If we want to randomly model exponential growth, we can use the row_number in the exponent. Here we’re having a daily exponential growth of 10% (see the 1.1^(row_number() over())) in the query:

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), (10 + 7*random())*(1.1^(row_number() over())) as value FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

Random Exponential Decay Sequence

Similarly to get a exponential decay we can take the power of a number less than 1 (see (.9^(row_number() over()))).

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), (1000 + 1000*random())*(.9^(row_number() over())) as value FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

Random Log Growth Sequence

And PostgreSQL also has a log function we can use to model random logarithmic growth:

SELECT TO_CHAR(day, 'YYYY-MM-DD'), (1000 + 500*random())*log(row_number() over()) as value FROM generate_series
        ( '2017-02-01'::date
        , '2017-04-01'::date
        , '1 day'::interval) day

There are a lot great things you can do with PostgreSQL’s random() function combined with generating series to get sequences. Feel free to play around with a few yourself in the SQLBox below, or using Chartioif you’d like to visualize them as well.

Written by: Dave Fowler
Reviewed by: Matt David