MS Access SQL for randomising the results from a query

bullish_fractal

I was wanting to randomize the source of a form so that I could test myself on some Russian within a table. Turns out its very simple. Basing a Query on the following SQL will achieve it.

SELECT TableName.PKID, TableName.Field1, TableName.Field2
FROM TableName
ORDER BY rnd(INT(NOW*PKID)-NOW*PKID);

The nice thing about basing a form on this is that every time you open the query it will run a query and give you a complete random list but importantly if you want to navigate through the records in the form it will remember the random order and you can go back and forth in the list and it will be in the order as originally opened.

The interesting thing about this code is that it takes its seed from the time (the function NOW) the next thing I am thinking about doing is making that a definable variable that can be set automatically by the user. As I said I have used the above code to test myself on Russian Vocabulary. I have a dictionary of all the words that I have come across at present. I am given a phrase or word in English and I must type it out in Russian. This was good except when I opened the form it would test me on the table in the same order everytime. Great except I new the first part of the table well and steadily got worse as I went through the table. The table is now so big that I would never sit down and work through the whole table. Randomising the table prior to opening the form solved this but introduced a new problem. Having the same list was useful for building up knowledge of the words it effectively broke the table into a small subset. By having a variable that the user could define they or myself will be able to only move to a random list once I am confident of those words. My thinking is that this will break down what is now quite a large list into smaller parts to learn but I can still use repetition to improve my competency and rate of learning.