Random results and other adventures...

I am fairly new to mysql and am using it with PHP, and I am curious to know...
- how can i retrieve random results from a search. ie, if a search yields 10 results, but i only want to choose 3 random results, how can i do this?
also...
- when searching a database, how can i check to see if a field has a value? For instance, using:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE name=.... and only retrieve results for where 'name' has a value.
i appreciate any assistance you could offer...
thanks!

Using SELECT TOP 3 you can select first three rows but it's not random. It depends on whether you use any kind of ordering both implicit and explict.

To make it truly random, you may have to write a procedure to hold the result and randomly select 3 rows.

For the second case you can filter the name by
AND NAME is not NULL
AND NAME <> ''

thanks! Ill give it a go.