I’m trying to display a list of shops each with 3 random items from their shop, if they have 3 or more listings, that are actively advertising. I have 3 tables: one for the shops – “Shops”, one for the listings – “Listings” and one that tracks active advertisers – “AdShops”.

Using the below statement, the listings returned are random however I’m not getting exactly 3 listings (rows) returned per shop.

SELECT AdShops.ID, Shops.url, Shops.image_url, Shops.user_name AS shop_name,
       Shops.title, L.listing_id AS listing_id, L.title AS listing_title,
       L.price as price, L.image_url AS listing_image_url, L.url AS listing_url
FROM   AdShops INNER JOIN
       Shops ON AdShops.user_id = Shops.user_id INNER JOIN
       Listings AS L ON Shops.user_id = L.user_id
WHERE  (Shops.is_vacation = 0 AND Shops.listing_count > 2 AND 
        L.listing_id IN
            (SELECT TOP 3 L2.listing_id
             FROM   Listings AS L2
             WHERE  L2.listing_id IN 
                 (SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT L3.listing_id
                  FROM   Listings AS L3
                  WHERE  (L3.user_id = L.user_id)
                 )
             ORDER BY NEWID()
            )
       )
ORDER BY Shops.shop_name

I’m stumped. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix it?

The ideal solution would be one record per store with the 3 listings (and associated data) were in columns and not rows – is this possible?